Earlier this month the Minister of ICT Supa Mandiwanzira gazetted new Quality of Service (QoS) regulations for the Zimbabwean telecommunications sector.
For people who have been following these developments, this is the same set of draft regulations that had POTRAZ, the telecoms industry regulator seeking input from Zimbabweans in September last year.
Under the new regulations, the performance of all telecoms operators and their delivery of service is expected to meet a new set of standards which will be monitored by POTRAZ.
You can access the complete regulations from POTRAZ, and you can also access the draft regulations that give an outline of the framework from the POTRAZ website.
This new QoS framework is expected to bring in new levels of accountability which will protect consumers from an unreliable performance from all registered operators while ensuring that certain levels of service value are delivered.
It won’t be empty talk only, though. There are some provisions for the enforcement of the regulatory framework which have been included.
POTRAZ is empowered to penalise operators that fail to comply with the key performance indicators or are unable to resolve consumer complaints within the resolution-time set by the regulations.
What do the regulations cover?
Some of the service quality targets that have been set by POTRAZ include the following
- for mobile voice telecommunication, the activation of service has to be within 5 seconds
- operators have been given an allowance of up to 1 hour for service downtime in mobile voice telecommunications
- a target of at least 95% has been set for the call success rate (CSR) – which refers to the number of calls established over the total number of mobile call attempts to a valid number
- there’s a target of at least 80% for the Call Completion Rate (CCR) – which is the percentage of calls that have been successfully setup, maintained and terminated normally by the caller or receiver to the total number of call attempts in a specific time period.
- the audio voice quality of mobile voice calls should be deemed as being at least fair
- there is a 98% target has been set for SMS delivery success
- for mobile broadband, the data service availability target- which is the ratio of successful logging on and attached to the network to the total attempts – has been set at 98%
- fixed data and internet services have been given a 99,99% target for service availability
- for fixed internet services, when it comes to the downlink throughput – which is the speed with which data can be transmitted from a remote device to a local device, there is a target of at least 95 % of speed agreed with the user
Some of the other parameters that have been set are for consumer care and these apply to all service under local telecommunications. These include
- a target of 1 hour or less for responding to a subscriber’s failed attempts to check the account balance
- a request for a PUK code should be met within an hour
- a request for blocking a reported lost or stolen SIM card for which subscriber ownership has been confirmed should be met within 30 minutes during working hours
- the reflection of bill payments for a mobile account should take less than 5 minutes and at most 10 minutes for online payments after there’s a receipt of payment
A look at these regulations shows how Zimbabweans stand to benefit from better value provision from operators.
Issues like service quality have received a measurable value and customer care which is largely disappointing from the host of service providers in the country has also been placed under the spotlight, something that will benefit from the weight of the law.
However, for this to have the intended impact POTRAZ will have to make sure that the market is fully educated on how to raise complaints, follow up on poor delivery and share their worst experiences with the relevant people.
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7 comments
Capacity, and do so equally across all service providers will be the proverbial test of the pudding.
They all have the capacity to offer the quality of service that we need, I think the minister has gone through this problem too, I can’t wait to get more updates about this, a very much awaited step in the direction we need to be going.
Will the state owned operators, who can’t be bothered to pay license fees or USF contributions, be held accountable for their service quality?
The Regulations are a good start & it is good to see the inclusion of an “Opt Out” requirement for unsolicited messages sent to consumers. I believe the Regulations would have been even more relevant if they also dealt with the minimum standards for 4G data (currently Net-One claims to have 4G coverage in Zimbabwe, but I have moved around Harare and have never accessed any 4G signal using my LTE enabled handset and LTE enabled SIM card). The Regulations are also silent about Mobile Money which is one of the main sources of income for MNOs and a source of a sizable amount of consumer complaints.
Nigel, its all good on paper, but can Potraz implement this? As a tech publishing, you should have looked at the problems Potraz was facing before which you wrote about and make a technical judgement not just to copy and paste.
Do you ever look back, let me take you back in time and remind you that this is old garbage being renewed again and again and again and you guys are just falling for it:
Here is what Kabweza wrote 4 years ago when Chamisa wanted to crack whip(whatever that means)
http://www.techzim.co.zw/2012/09/potraz-currently-unable-to-measure-mobile-networks-service-quality/#.VyCBSHouGao
Here is what my fav man Victor wrote last year in June about Potraz floating a tender for QoS monitoring
http://www.techzim.co.zw/2015/06/the-new-potraz-system-whats-in-it-for-you-and-the-government/#.VyCBxXouGao
Now a new ICT minister is in place, he is digging old history and floating it as new. You can gazette as many laws as you want, but if you do not have the capacity to monitor from technical point of view, those laws become weapons for corruption.
As we start to move towards elections(most parties are already in election mode), every minister will be making a lot of noise to be seen like they are doing something, that include our ICT minister.
You’ve raised some valid points there. It all lies in the ability to implement, which in this case refers to POTRAZ monitoring every operator and then enforcing the law when it’s been violated.
This is the reason why POTRAZ put out the tender for a QoS system, explained in the article you referenced there. I’m yet to confirm whether POTRAZ has acquired it (we reached out to them and we will definitely share all the information we get on this), but it doesn’t seem fair to assume that POTRAZ will ignore the importance in enforcing these new regulations or fail to appreciate how QoS tech is crucial here.
Its true, this issue was hardly being raised for the first time by the current Minister, but to be clear this hardly qualifies as garbage that we fell for. Things have changed. It’s worth noting that in all the cases you referenced there was no regulation that supported the moves to “crack the whip” and POTRAZ hadn’t carried out extensive work that included the draft of the policy, engagement of stakeholders (including the public) and pushing all this into a valid instrument. All that has happened in the past year, which shows some progress. Whether the Minister uses that for political mileage or not is beside the point. Progress has been made.
As for corruption, well, we all know that the threat of that scourge is part of any conversation and it requires its own solutions.
Fair enough! Lets wait for the reply and see if they have Qos monitoring in place…