You can now rate your mobile service providers' services

You will soon have a chance to directly rate the services you receive from your mobile service provider.

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has reviewed the formula for assessing the quality of telecommunications services and in addition to network performance and quality of end-to-end performance service, the industry regulator says providers will now also be tested on quality of consumer experience.

The regulator says this will be conducted through customer satisfaction surveys that will for the first time provide subscribers with the opportunity to rate their mobile service providers.

Consumer protection

“Data on the quality of experience component will be based on annual customer satisfaction surveys which will give indicators on customers’ perception relating to a variety of quality of service aspects such as network availability, service quality, service tariffs, and customer care,” says CA in the review document.

This means consumers will be able to indicate their satisfaction or lack of it with their service providers’ pricing, an issue that has been central to consumer protection advocates in the past. The new framework will be rolled out in phases to allow service providers to transition with all three components fully in use by 2020.

Compliance levels

A service provider's failure to attain minimum compliance levels of 80 per cent will attract penalties of up to 0.2 per cent of an operator’s gross turnover.

The current quality of service framework developed in 2009 measures the performance of service providers along seven key indicators, including call completion rate, call set up success rate, call drop rate, and call block rate.

Other indicators include speech quality, call set-up time, handover success rate, and signal availability. In all indicators, service providers are expected to maintain scores of above 95 per cent.