Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority Director General James Kilaba addresses a press conference in Dar es Salaam yesterday. PHOTO | ERICKY BONIPHACE
What you need to know:
The seven mobile phone providers, namely Airtel, Smart, Tigo, Vodacom, Zantel, Halotel and TTCL, are required to have paid their fines to the regulator by May 12, this year
Dar es Salaam. The Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) has penalised seven mobile operators Sh695 million for failing to comply with the quality of service requirements.
Accordingly, Airtel will pay Sh55 million, Smart Sh120 million, Tigo Sh120 million, Vodacom Sh115 million, Zantel Sh140 million, Halotel Sh 50 million and Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL) Sh95 million.
TCRA Director General James Kilaba said the authority penalised the mobile operators for failing to comply with the quality of service (QoS) they offered to customers and directed all seven mobile operators to pay their penalty charges by May 12.
He said yesterday, as he was briefing reporters that from January to March this year TCRA carried out QoS measurement in Dar es Salaam, Mbeya and Iringa service areas to test the services offered by the mobile operators, but unfortunately the QoS was not satisfying.
“Testing of quality of service was done on network availability, call connection failure rate, all drop rate, call setup time, service coverage, call success rate handover success rate attach setup time, PDP context activation failure ratio, SMS services accessibility and PDP context activation time,” he said.
In view of this, he explained that every quarter TCRA performed measurements on QoS for both voice and data services from end user viewpoints. The measurements are carried out in fulfilment of the requirements of the Electronic and Postal Communications Regulations, 2011.
He explained that the QoS test results showed all mobile operators had failed to meet quality of service parameters contrary to Regulations 9, 10, and 11 of the Electronic and Postal Communications Regulations, 2011.
“To ensure quality service to consumer, complying with the targets of the QoS parameters provided by the law is an obligation of every operator as per Regulation 8 of the Electronic and Postal Communications Regulations, 2011,” he said.
Mr Kilaba added that noncompliance with quality service parameters was a breach of licence conditions and contravention of the Regulations. Therefore, where there was noncompliance with the quality of services TCRA was obliged under Regulation 15 of the Electronic and Postal Communications, 2011 to impose penalties.
He noted that the authority reminded all operators to ensure they stuck to all time compliance with the requirements of the quality of service regulations.
To ensure continued improvement in quality of service in the country, the TCRA will continue conducting QoS test in different service areas in each quarter. Repeated noncompliance will attract more legal and regulatory action, which may include the cancellation of operators’ licences.
Commenting on the penalty charges imposed, Airtel Corporate Affairs Director Beatrice Singano noted that since the decision had been made by the TCRA they could not go against it, but the important issue was to ensure Airtel worked hard to provide better and quality services.
“We are going to evaluate ourselves to see where we went wrong and improve the quality of service for customers,” she said.
Vodacom head of Efficient Network Department Nguvu Kamando said as one of the leading mobile operators they took TCRA’s decision as a challenge to improve the quality of their services countrywide.
“Although the country has a large number of populations Vodacom will ensure that it improves its network services to customers and will continue collaborating with TCRA,” he said.
