Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has raised more than Sh500 million in penalties from mobile network operators (MNOs) in the last five years for failing to meet the quality of service. 

The regulator has set tough service standards requirements for the MNO’s by pegging quality of voice telephony, data and Short Messaging Services (SMS) at a 80 per cent threshold, failure to which it attracts a 0.1 per cent penalty on their turnover revenues.

“It is a requirement for mobile network operators to meet the quality of service requirements as outlined in their NFP-T1 licenses,” it said.

During the financial year 2020-2021, CA penalised Airtel Sh26.3 million, while Telkom attracted a fine of Sh11.4 million, CA disclosed in a statement. 

According to the regulator, Safaricom surpassed the threshold by achieving 95.38 per cent, while Airtel and Telkom were below by 67.42 and 67.20 per cent respectively.

Quality of service

The Authority evaluates the telcos performances using the 2017 Quality of Service Assessment Framework, which requires MNOs to cut the number of unsuccessful call ratio to below 5 per cent, call drops to less than 2 per cent, call set up time below 8 seconds and completion rates at over 95 per cent.

Regulations have also pegged SMS completion rate at 95 per cent and delivery to fall below 30 seconds, while extending Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) to three minutes. Between 2015 and 2021, Safaricom has paid Sh427 million, followed by Airtel at Sh85.9 million and Telkom at Sh59.3 million, money which is remitted to Treasury.