Mobile phone operators fail to meet CCK target

By Abigael Sum

Kenya: None of the four mobile phone operators met the quality of service (QoS) overall target set by the industry regulator.

A report released by Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK) showed that Safaricom, Airtel, Essar and Telkom failed to meet the 80 per cent compliance target for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the assessment period 2012- 2013.

Telkom met five out of the eight KPIs, recording the highest performance of 62.50 per cent, dropping from  87.5 per cent recorded in the previous assessment period.

It displayed an outstanding performance in the Rift Valley and Nairobi region scoring 100 per cent.

Telkom Kenya’s Orange network is also reported to be the only operator that passed the speech quality test with a performance of 96 per cent from the set target of more than 95 per cent.

The other three operators scored 50 per cent on quality of service assessment test.

The report indicates that Safaricom did not meet the target in any of the regions assessed, with its best performance in Nairobi at 75 per cent.

It is the only operator that did not meet the set targets in a single region countrywide with the worst ratings in the Eastern, North Rift and North Eastern regions.

Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore dismissed claims of a possible clash with the CCK over the renewal of its licence to operate for the next 10 years, with the regulator previously insisting it will not renew the company’s licence if it does not meet the minimum quality of service threshold.

According to the report, Airtel performance has over the four-year period steadily declined from a compliance rate of 87.5 per cent in the first assessment period (2009/10) to the current 50 per cent compliance rate.

Airtel recorded good performance in Nairobi at 100 per cent and in Rift Valley at 87.5 per cent with the least compliance rate of 37.5 per cent in Central and North Rift regions.

Essar’s yu network achieved the best QoS performance in the Rift Valley region at 87.5 per cent, a significant improvement since it was its weakest performance area in the last assessment period at 37.5 per cent.

The QoS assessment framework is based on KPIs which include completed calls, dropped calls rate, call set up time, call set up success rate, handover success rate and speech quality.

Non-compliance attracts penalties ranging from Sh500,000 to 0.2 per cent of the operator’s annual gross turnover.