AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIA Communications Regulation Authority (TCRA) has fined six Telecom companies a total of 38bn/- for failure to meet service quality standards.
The companies with their charges in brackets are Airtel Tanzania (11bn/-), Tigo (13bn/-), Halotel (3bn/-), Vodacom (7bn/-), Zantel (1bn/-) and TTCL (1bn/-).
Briefing reporters on Wednesday in Dar es Salaam, TCRA Director General, Eng James Kilaba said that they have urged the companies not to pay the fines to TCRA but rather they should use them to improve their services within 90 days.
TCRA is responsible for monitoring the quality of communication services provided by service providers and in doing so, the regulator quarterly evaluates the quality of services provided by the companies.
Eng Kilaba explained that in October, November and December 2020, TCRA evaluated the quality of mobile telecommunications services provided by Airtel Tanzania Plc, Zanzibar Telecoms Plc, Viettel Tanzania Plc, MIC Tanzania Plc, Vodacom Tanzania Plc and Tanzania Telecommunication Corporation.
He said that the fines have been imposed in accordance with Article 20 of the Code of Conduct for Communications Services, which states that service providers, who fail to meet service quality criteria, should be liable to pay fines of various rates.
He noted an assessment was conducted in Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Singida, Kilimanjaro, Mbeya, Unguja, Tanga and Simiyu regions on how services were rendered by these companies by looking at criteria such as network availability, call connection failure rate, call drop rate, call set up time, service coverage, call success rate, handover success rate, ping round trip time mean, attach failure ratio, attach setup time and SMS service accessibility.
According to him, service providers reported at TCRA between 11 and 13 January to defend themselves so that legal action should not be taken against them for failing to meet service quality criteria.
According to services providing defence, TCRA was satisfied that they had violated the quality of service standards and in accordance with section 48 (2) and (3) of the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority Act, chapter 172 2017 references to Tanzanian law.
Moreover, a memorandum of understanding was signed between TCRA and all service providers yesterday on 16 February 2021.
To closely monitor the implementation of the directives, TCRA has instructed each service provider to submit a written plan within three days on how they will use the fines to improve their services as directed.
TCRA has instructed them to continue to take steps on improving services to meet quality standards in accordance with regulations 9, 10 and 11 of electronic and postal communications (service quality) 2018.
“If the service providers fail, reject or ignore the orders provided by TCRA, further regulatory and legal action will be taken,” he said.
He further urged Tanzanians to continue reporting to TCRA in case of poor quality services as the country cannot enter into the industrial economy while embracing poor communications.
