Complaints against telcos and broadcasters surged 28.5 percent in the year ended June 30, 2025, signaling dwindling quality of services and increased violations of consumer rights.
Analysis of data from the Communications Authority (CA) shows that consumers filed 914 cases on various breaches in the period under review, compared to 711 in the year that ended June 2024.
The surge has put service providers on the spot amid mounting calls on the companies to improve the quality of service on their network and uphold client rights.
Consumers filed 186 cases against broadcasters in the period ended June 2025, compared to none the previous year, making them the biggest driver of the increase in all complaints lodged with the communications watchdog.
Service interruptions
The number of complaints on service interruptions rose to 27 from 19, while those on unfair billing rose by three to 64 in the same period.
Consumers escalate complaints to the CA in instances where the respective service providers do not resolve cases.
Complaints on dropped calls and mobile data outages, breach of customer privacy, service delays, and inappropriate media content dropped signaling that telcos have stepped up efforts to enhance service provision to consumers.
Complaints on breach of customer privacy recorded the biggest drop at 40.1 percent to 76 cases in the year ended June 2025 from 127 a year earlier, while cases on service termination dropped to 50 from 55 in the same period.
The share of resolved cases as a portion of the filed complaints rose to 87.1 percent or 797 cases in the year ended June 2025 from 82.7 percent (588) the previous year.
CA has on several occasions called on the telcos to enhance the quality of their service, especially in areas outside major towns, to boost connectivity.
The quality of service survey (the latest of which was conducted last year) is a key parameter that CA relies on to determine how well or poorly served consumers are in different parts of the country.
Minimum threshold
Telcos that fail to meet the minimum threshold are given deadlines to effect corrective measures, such as increasing the number of communication masts in a given location.
The masts are critical in determining the quality of calls, texts, and mobile data that consumers get on the different networks.
“The performance per county shows that Airtel met the threshold in 24 out of 47 counties (51.06 percent), Safaricom in 30 out of 47 counties (63.83 percent) and Telkom Kenya in three out of 47 counties (6.38 percent),” the CA says in a report on the quality of service offered by the trio.
Safaricom, Airtel, and Telkom Kenya are the three major telcos in the country.
