Safaricom worst in 2012, CCK report on service quality shows

Kenya’s largest operator Safaricom was the worst mobile service provider in the year to June 2012, the latest quality of service study by the industry regulator shows.

Released last week by the Communications Commission of Kenya, the quality of service report show the big players, Safaricom and Airtel, offered low quality services compared to the smaller providers yuMobile and Orange who surpassed compliance levels.

According to the regulator, Safaricom only met half of the eight set parameters with a notable decline on last year’s performance.

Serving the biggest subscriber base with over 19 million customers across the country, the operator scored an average 50 per cent, falling far below the required compliance target of 80 per cent.

Last year Safaricom scored 75 per cent on account of improved network that saw number of call drops reduce and improved voice quality.

“Safaricom did not meet the target in any of the regions assessed,” CCK said in its report released last week.

The quality of service assessment is in its third year running. The assessment is based on how an operator performs on eight key parameters as picked up in different parts of the country.

The eight include the call set-up time – period of time between the end of dialling of a telephone call and the start of voice or data transmission; completion of calls – the number of calls that are completed on a network satisfactorily compared to the total number of call attempts made by callers; call set-up success rate – the number of attempts to make a call that result in a connection to the dialled number; speech quality – clarity; drop call rates – phone call that is terminated by the network unexpectedly as a result of technical reasons.

Call handover success rate – when a mobile handset moves out of one cell to the next and is handed over automatically from the base station of the first cell to that of the next with no discernible; and the strength of received signals are also considered in determining compliance.

Airtel Kenya also performed below par in the current assessment in what the regulator said is degrading an already poor performance trend started two years ago.

“The licensee moved from a compliant status of 87.5 per cent in the first year (2010) to the non-compliance level of 75 per cent last year and now to a lower score of 62.5 this year,” CCK said.

Essar’s yu and Telkom Orange were the top performers, both exceeding the target compliance level. The two firms jumped out of non-compliance levels recorded in the last two years to top of the industry after they scored 87.5 per cent each.

“These results go to further demonstrate our commitment to the subscribers we serve. It demonstrates that we continue to give the best, not just in our highly affordable costs, but also in the level of quality and we give to our subscribers,” yuMobile managing director Madhur Taneja said in a statement.

Interesting is the fact that none of the four mobile operators achieved compliance in the quality of speech, which is their core business. All of them also recorded poor performance in the Rift Valley.

CCK said that the levels of compliance could be related to the number of subscribers a network has and the capacity available on the network to meet the resultant demand, an explanation why Safaricom, with the highest number of subscribers, staged the worst performance.

“This seems to be the case for Safaricom and Airtel whose compliance levels tend to be erratic in areas where they have the most subscriber activity – Nairobi and Central regions – leading to poor quality and non-compliance,” the regulator observed.

“We acknowledge that the CCK study has identified our network as not meeting all the set out key performance indicators. It is also clear from the report that the networks with the largest coverage and the highest traffic are the ones most affected most by quality challenges on account of the volume of traffic that they carry,” Safaricom chief technical officer Thibaud Rerolle.

Corrective measures

The firm said it has launched significant investments in to its network over the last six months both in terms of transmission capacity and coverage which it expects to reflect positively in the next quality of service report.

“We have set aside further investments for the next financial year to the tune of Sh23 billion and contracted international quality of service consultants internally which we believe will help improve customer experience in our network,” the operator said in a statement.

The report comes at a time when the ministry of Information and Communications is seeking to impose heavier penalties against mobile phone operators who fail to meet the quality of service standards set by the regulator.

Currently, operators pay a fine of Sh500,000 for breach of the quality of service standards but the ministry feels the penalty is too lenient and has failed to make the operators comply. It is now working on a policy to raise the fines.

“To force the operators to take the matter more seriously, we need to change the current policy to make the penalties more severe. A fine of Sh500,000 for a corporate with a turnover of over Sh100 billion will not have the intended impact,” Permanent Secretary Bitange Ndemo said.

CCK cautioned the operators to step up their efforts to improve service delivery since consumers are beginning to understand and demand their rights to receive better services.

The telcos will now be put under more pressure following their decision to increase calling rates as they fight to remain sustainable in a highly competitive environment.

Over the last two weeks, Airtel and yuMobile revised their call rates upwards, dashing consumer hopes that voice tariffs would fall following a cut on the charges that mobile operators pay one another to terminate calls.

With the increment, the two firms are following in the footsteps of Safaricom which went first in the upward tariff review when it increased its calling by 33 per cent in October last year.

Nearly a month ago, CCK lowered the mobile termination rate to Sh1.44 from Sh2.21. Both Airtel and yuMobile lobbied aggressively strongly for the cut, which is expected to save them millions of shillings in payments made to rival firm Safaricom.

However, industry players said they would not be able to pass on the savings to consumers, citing a need to recoup falling revenues in the voice segment of the market.