The Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority-ZICTA has disclosed that they have upgraded the quality of service monitoring equipment and now have capability to monitor this parameter on a town by town basis.
According to information made available to the Zambian Business Times – ZBT, the ICT regulator further revealed that there has been a rapid increase of network usage by more than 30% across all mobile network operators in Zambia since the advent of COVID-19 and admitted that this has resulted in poor Quality of Service (QoS).
ZICTA Acting Director General Eng. Mutale Mwenya said in order to mitigate the effects of the poor QoS, the authority has upgraded the quality of service monitoring equipment that has enhanced capabilities to monitor 4G/LTE networks in addition to 2G and 3G.
Mwenya said the authority has assigned to the service providers prime spectrum in the 800MHz band with conditions to increase network capacity as well as improve the quality of experience and QoS delivery adding that the authority will also be issuing more 5G spectrum in the next three years starting next year.
He said other strategies aimed at improving the QoS and fostering an enabling environment for innovation, e-commerce and other services that rely on ICTs put in place include increased QoS monitoring activities as the authority implemented a measurement mechanism of quality of service on a town-by-town basis to localise and address poor quality of service noting that this allows for identification of specific locations with poor quality of service.
Eng Mwenya added that the authority has also metedout penalties against erring mobile network operators over the past four years and increased engagements with the mobile network operators regarding underlying causes of poor quality of service.
He said the other intervention is the promotion of investment in the sector as the level of investment has a direct impact on the quality of service and experience therefore the authority has directed mobile network operators to reinvest in their networks including the acquisition of standby power solutions to mitigate poor quality of service.
The authority continues to advocate for reduction of corporate tax and zero-rating of ICT equipment in order to make funds available for reinvestment.
ZICTA is mandated under the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Act No.15 of 2009 to regulate quality of service in Zambia.
Section 67 of the ICT Act empowers the authority to prescribe standards as well as issue and review the quality of service guidelines in line with market dynamics and the first quality of service guidelines issued in 2010 mainly focused on monitoring voice services while the second quality of service guidelines issued in 2019 were to deal with increased data services.
The 2019 QoS review was mainly driven by the degradation in the QoS being provided by the service providers resulting in poor quality of experience to consumers of ICT services adding that the authority has been receiving numerous complaints on poor QoS from consumers across the country.
The authority has decided to conduct an inclusive review of the 2019 quality of service guidelines to take into account the views of all stakeholders especially the consumers and members of the public will be invited to comment on the QoS guidelines being revised.
