Government gazettes SI to punish telecommunications firms for poor service delivery

Telecommunications companies and internet services providers face fines of up to US$5 000 for poor service delivery, according to regulations gazetted by the Minister of Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services, Tatenda Mavetera last Friday.

The fines are contained in Statutory Instrument 154 of 2024 and are cited as the Postal and Telecommunications (Quality of Service) (Amendment) Regulations, 2024 (No. 1).

The fines will be enforced by the Postal and Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe.

The Authority shall enforce performance based on the key indicators that include quality of service over a three-month period (penalty cell) for short message service (SMS), (fixed) data and Internet as prescribed or as contracted, for interconnection links as prescribed and submission of network performance data.

Infringements that include call drop rate, call setup success rate, cell availability, data service access success rate and data services drop rate shall attract a US$200 fine per breach.

For SMS, the key performance indicators include SMS end-to-end delivery time and SMS delivery success rate with breaches attracting a US$200 per cell in breach while for data and Internet services providers the performance indicator is speed and shall attract a fine of up to US$5 000 per infringement.

The Herald