NCA says wholesale compensation for bad telecom service not feasible, but expert disagrees

NCA says wholesale compensation for bad telecom service not feasible, but expert disagrees

Principal Manager at NCA, Kwame Baah-Acheamfuor

Ghana’s telecoms industry regulator, National Communication Authority (NCA) says it will be difficult for it to supervise wholesale compensation for customers of telecom service providers in times of poor service because “we can’t measure customers experience to determine who suffered from network interruptions.”

This was in response to a recent call by the Network of Communication Reporters (NCR) for the NCA to ensure that the telcos compensated their customers for bad service rather than it (NCA) fining the telcos and using the money to run its day to day operations while customers continue to suffer poor service.

NCR’s call was in line with a suggestion by the former Minister of Communication Haruna Iddrisu for the NCA to find innovative ways of supervising direct compensation for consumers in times of poor telecom service, rather than the fines.

But Principal Manager at the NCA, Kwame Baah Acheamfuor told journalists at a forum that whereas it is easy to measure service quality in a particular community, as per the parameters set by the NCA, it is not easy to determine which individual may have suffered from a particular service quality breach so it becomes difficult to order the respective telco to compensate everybody who lives in that community.

NCA’s quality of service (QoS) parameters allow telcos certain limited levels of failure in the areas of call congestion rate, call drops rate, call set up time, and stand-alone dedicated control channel (SDCCH) congestion rate. But it does not measure direct customer experience to determine who suffered from those failures when they occur.

“These are matters of law and the respective telco can sue the NCA and require evidence for why it is being ordered to compensate Mr. A or Mr. B if the individual has not made any complaint with evidence to show that he or she was affected by the service interruption,” he said.

Baah-Aceamfour explained further that because the phone lines are mobile, users are usually not stable so a user may be a resident of a particular community where the fault occurred, but may have been out of home at the particular time so he/she may not have been affected.

He said in times of interruptions, the law requires customers to make specific complaints to the telco and if the complaints are investigated and found to be credible, the telco is obliged to compensate the customers; otherwise the consumer can report to the NCA via its website, email or on phone and the NCA will take it up on behalf of the consumer.

“Until the consumer makes a direct complaint to us we cannot determine what challenges each person may have suffered because our quality of service (QoS) checks may show breaches in a particularly location but that may not have affected everyone in that location so we can’t order a wholesale compensation,” he said.

SO WHAT DOES NCA USE THE FINES FOR?

Asked what the NCA uses the fines for, Kwame Baah Acheamfuor said the equipment used in measuring the QoS cost the NCA US$3million, and the cost involved in the testing QoS on monthly basis is also very heavy, because it involves lots of phone calls to check the service quality.

“We also use the money to hire and keep the best skilled personnel who go round do these measures and tests to ensure that the telcos meet their license requirement in terms of QoS.”

“You would realize that quality human resource usually leave the telcos and join the regulator but no one has ever left the regulator and joined a telco – it tells you that we are using the fines to keep the best human capital,” he said.

Some of the journalists who participated in the forum raised question as to the use of the US$3million equipment the NCA have acquired to measure QoS if it is not reflecting on overall customer experience.

They argued that whereas it is good for the NCA to acquire the best equipment and human resource to keep the telcos on their toes, that investment by the NCA has not benefited consumers very much because general service quality is not improving in spite of the fines and acquisition of state of the art equipment and skilled personnel.

Some of the journalists insisted that it is not fair for the NCA to continue to fine telcos on the back of the poor customer experience and use the money to pay its staff fat salaries, in the name of keeping the best quality staff, while consumers continue to suffer the very poor services for which the NCA instituted the fines.

NCA says wholesale compensation for bad telecom service not feasible, but expert disagrees

Meanwhile, a Telecoms Engineer, who has worked with at least four of the telecoms service providers in Ghana, told ADOMBUSINESS it is not wholly true that the telcos cannot determine which particular customers or phone lines were affected by a particular network fault.

He noted that whereas it is true that people move with their mobile phone lines, a vigorous check can show how many lines were actually present in a particularly location at the particular time a fault occurred and therefore affected by the fault.

The Telecoms Engineer said the towers that serve customers in particular localities are linked to BTS’s which are also linked to switches, so if, for instance, a fault occurs in a particular BTS, it is easy to tell which customers are likely to be affected based on the towers connected to the damage BTS; and a little bit of hard work can help to separate those who were present in that locality, at the time of the fault, from those who were not.

“It is even easier when the fault occurs in just one tower,” he said.

He believes the NCA could collaborate with the telcos and do the necessary hard work, so that affected customers could be compensated without each individual having to make a complaint to the NCA or even to his or her service provider.

This he thinks, would be more beneficial to the customer than the fines NCA takes and uses to meet its operational cost.