The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has issued warning notices to Airtel and Telkom Kenya for non-compliance with the quality of service (QoS) provided to consumers on their mobile telephony networks.
In the Service Report for the year ended June 2023, CA observed that only Safaricom surpassed the 80 percent performance threshold after attaining 90 percent of the set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
“Airtel Kenya Networks and Telkom Kenya failed to meet not only their coverage targets but also a number of the most critical QoS KPIs, particularly the “Unsuccessful Call Ratio” and Data Internet KPIs, which is an indicator for coverage and Internet availability and accessibility respectively,” reads part of the report.
Airtel attained 79 percent, while Telkom recorded a 65 percent performance rate. A mobile operator is rated compliant when they attain 80 percent of the set QoS KPIs.
The report noted a drastic mobile network industry performance drop from 82.3 percent in the year 2021-2022 to 72.4 percent in the year 2022-2023.
On performance per county, Nairobi emerged as the top County with the best QoS, scoring 93.9 percent, while Laikipia ranked last at 54 percent.
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”The Authority had targeted conducting the QoS inspection and monitoring in all 47 counties; however, due to insecurity, the Authority did not conduct the QoS tests in Wajir, Mandera, and Garissa counties,’’ CA noted.
The Network provider’s Performance within the counties shows Safaricom topped with 87.60 percent, followed by Airtel and Telkom at 75.07 percent and 54.75 percent, respectively.
Safaricom recorded the highest performance in Nairobi, Mombasa, Lamu, Nyandarua, Kwale, Busia, and Kiambu at a 100 percent rating and poor performance in Vihiga and Kajiado counties at 63.64 percent.
On the other hand, Airtel showed good performance in Machakos, Mombasa, Nairobi, Kericho, Siaya, and Muranga counties, scoring 90.91 percent.
Telkom followed at 72.73 percent highest score in Vihiga, Mombasa, Nairobi, and Nakuru, while the lowest score was 36.36 percent in Muranga and Laikipia counties.
“The Authority has, therefore, proceeded to levy a penalty for underperformance in offering quality of service in the mobile network subsector by Telkom Kenya and Airtel Networks,” said the regulator.
“The penalty was accompanied by a notice of non-compliance, which requires the networks to improve on their current performance during the next assessment and failure for which an escalated sanction level will be applied,” CA stated.
