Kenya’s leading mobile operator Safaricom will have to pay a KSh2.36 billion (US$27 million) fee in order to have its license extended for 10 years by the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK).
Francis Wagusi, CCK director general, said the telecom license which was issued in 1999 is due to expire on June 30, 2014, and has given the company until then to improve its quality of service, otherwise a license could be withheld.
“We are not going to allow consumers of services that we regulate get poor services when they are paying for them,” Wagusi said.
He added that Safaricom has for the last three years failed to meet the minimum quality of standards threshold.
“We have had issues with Safaricom on this for the last three years plus another one firm. We would want Kenyans to get good service because as a commission we have invested in our resources to ensure that all the firms provide the best.”
Wangusi added that the commission decided to make the announcement early to give Safaricom plenty of time to meet the required conditions.
Some of the quality of service required by CCK to all mobile communication providers include customers experiencing value for money, ease of use of the service or product, professionalism of the service provider in the provision of the services and flexibility, in terms of consumers being able to switch from one operator to another and security in secure conversations and data sent or received.
CCK surveys quality of service on eight parameters: completed calls rate, call set-up success rate, dropped calls, blocked calls, speech quality, handover success rate, call set-up time and signal strength.
If Safaricom’s license is renewed come June 2014, it will operate for another 10 years after which the license will be subjected to an auction where the most competitive bid will be issued with that license.
In the region, some countries have fined operators heavily with others cancelling licence over poor service.
In 2011, Rwanda revoked the licence of Rwandatel and fined MTN over the issue while in the past 12 months Nigerian operators have paid more than NGN1.3 billion (US$8 million) in fines because of poor services.
The three other mobile operators Airtel, Essar ‘s Yu and Orange Kenya would pay the same amount for renewal of their licenses for a further term of 10 year to ensure a level playing ground for all service providers in the sector.
