Southern Africa gets tough on service providers

To protect subscribers from exploitation, southern African countries are developing laws and regulations that impose heavy penalties on service providers whose networks experience more than a 5 percent rate of dropped calls or calls that cannot be completed.

South Africa, Zambia and Namibia are among the countries that have enacted rules that give telecom sector regulators the power to impose heavy penalties on ailing service providers.

Through its regulator, the Independent Communication Authority of South Africa (Icasa), the South African government last week issued what it called the End-User and Subscriber Service Charter. The charter directs operators to ensure that their networks are available to complete calls 95 percent of the time.

South African mobile-phone operators, however, claim that their call failure rate is only 2 percent and will not be affected by the charter.

In Zambia and Namibia, bills that spell out heavy penalties to faulty networks have been approved by lawmakers.

Amos Manyarara, Vodacom communications officer for the southern African mobile communication market, said the regulations will ensure efficiency on the part of the service providers.

Manyarara said service providers must ensure that they meet a measure of network standards so that customers are not exploited.

"What has been happening is that in addition to call drops, customers have been made to pay for a full minute, which is theft by service providers," Manyarara said.

The new South African Charter demands that mobile service providers submit reports every six months to see how well they are meeting the communication standards. In order to ensure that the charter is adhered to by operators, Icasa has set aside funds this year to monitor the transmission quality of the networks, while the Communications Authority of Zambia (CAZ) has already deployed network monitoring equipment in parts of the country.

Icasa's efforts to beef up consumer protection started two years ago when it formed a committee to set up minimum standards for customer service. The CAZ started pushing for stiffer penalties last year following complaints by customers and a survey that showed poor service.

Zambian mobile service providers have been failing to meet the 95 percent call-rate completion service level, prompting the CAZ to introduce penalties. Should there be a network breakdown, the new regulations require that service providers immediately inform the regulator and work to restore the network within three days.

The penalty for offering poor service to consumers by mobile service providers in Zambia is US$250 per affected user, while the new Icasa charter demands more than $63,000 as penalty for a poor network record.

In addition to heavy penalties, the new Zambia law also requires great compensation from service providers to customers.

Poor service provision by mobile service operators has become a source of concern in many African countries.

In Nigeria last year, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) directed MTN and Zain to pay a total amount of $40 million as compensation to subscribers as a result of congestion on their networks.