Telecoms operators in Nigeria have been given a timeline to improve on quality of service (QoS) provided to subscribers after the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) received data showing that telecommunications quality in Nigeria is nowhere near the acceptable global standard of 98 percent call success rate and 1 percent call dropped rate (DCR).
The dropped call rate is the fraction of the telephone calls which, due to technical reasons, were cut off before the speaking parties had finished their conversational tone and before one of them had hung up (dropped calls) This fraction is usually measured as a percentage of all calls.
Speaking to Information Communication Technology (ICT) journalists in Lagos Yesterday, Umar Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman of NCC said; “We have challenges in the quality of service in the industry but we are making efforts to solve these issues.
“ At the tail end of 2016, we obtained data to examine quality of service with regard to call drop rates which is supposed to be 1 percent, as well as call success rate which is supposed to be 98 percent according to acceptable global standards but Nigerian Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are far from this standard.
“This low quality of service is not acceptable and we have discussed this with the MNOs and we have insisted that the quality of service must improve. There was a time line given for this improvement to be made. In the first quarter of 2017, we noticed some improvement with key performance indicators (KPIs) but it is still below the stipulated standard of 1 percent and 2 percent respectively for call drop rate and call success rate,” Danbatta said.
Although the Commission said that there would be no deadline set for the for telecommunications operators to improve services, it was stated that various measures to reduce dropped call rates would be implemented by closely monitoring, tracking and reviewing the KPIs of operators by Network integrity and Technical Standards Department.
According to Sunday Dare, Executive Commissioner (Stakeholder Management), NCC; “NCC is not in a habit of pursuing deadlines, but instead, we are engaging operators to present to them the KPIs and outline steps to be taken to guide against poor service.
“In another week or two, the results for first quarter of 2017 will be out, and we looked at the service quality of mobile operators in 10 different states of Nigeria, so we are hoping to see some improvement because although there are no deadlines, there will be sanctions if our compliance management team finds out that operators are not complying with measures put in place to improve QoS,” Dare said.
Industry watchers however suggest that operators should be mandated to compensate subscribers for poor network quality as in the case of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) where the mobile operator was mandated by the regulator to pay compensation for every call, up to a maximum of three calls everyday from January 2017.
Online sources say this decision was challenged by the telecoms, which lost their case in the Delhi High Court.
“Nigerians have noticed that these mobile network operators do as they please until a heavy fine is issued on them, then they will sit up and provide service they should. So, unless the regulator puts a penalty on unwillingness to comply, we would be battling with poor service quality for a very long time,” Tunde Olorunfemi, a mobile network subscriber told BusinessDay.
Jumoke Akiyode
