Poor voice and data services were the most frequently reported consumer complaints to the Communications Authority (CA) in the quarter ended in June 2022. The complaints involved Kenyan telcos, Safaricom, Airtel, and Telkom Kenya.
According to data released yesterday from the regulator, poor voice and data complaints accounted for more than half of customer complaints recorded between April 1 and June 30. CA did not give a breakdown of specific complaints against each telco.
The report also showed that 28 percent of the complaints were about CA’s services and business opportunities with frequency interference taking third place with 11 percent and courier delivery delays recording the least number of complaints at 6 percent within the same period.
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Last month, CA released a 2021 quality report showing that Airtel had the worst services. The company recorded a quality service score of 65.45 percent, an improvement from 52 percent in 2020.
Telkom Kenya was the second worst with its quality report showing a decline from 73 percent in 2020 to 67.5 percent in 2021.
Safaricom maintained its lead in the quality of its services, recording a slight improvement with 92.7 percent against 92 percent in 2020.
Safaricom was the only compliant service provider, given that the regulator has set an 80 percent threshold for mobile services. Companies who fail to meet the standards are liable to pay fines of up to 0.2 percent of their revenues to the regulator.
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CA recorded a total of 1,623 complaints ranging from billings, illegal surveillance, service interruption, false advertising, privacy breaches, and service quality among others. Inappropriate content by broadcasters however topped the list.
“A significant proportion of the complaints related to broadcasting content (74.4 percent)” the CA said.
The evaluation is based on how well an operator performs on eight important parameters that are measured across the country.
The eight include the call set-up time, which is the amount of time between the end of a phone call’s dialing and the beginning of voice or data transmission; the completion of calls, which is the proportion of calls satisfactorily completed on a network to the total number of call attempts made by callers; the call set-up success rate, which is the proportion of call attempts that connect to the dialed number; the clarity of speech; and the completion of calls. Drop call rates are instances where a network unexpectedly ends a call due to a technicality.
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