Four telecommunication operators, Airtel-Tigo, Glo, MTN and Vodafone which were fined by the National Communications Authority’s (NCA) for poor service delivery, have decided to seek redress from the Electronic Communications Tribunal.
The independent tribunal allows telecos to appeal against decisions or orders made by the regulator, the National Communications Authority (NCA).
The four telecos are seeking a favorable ruling at the tribunal to overturn fines imposed on them by the regulator.
The NCA fined the 4 telcos a total of GHc34 million for failing to comply with quality of service requirements.
Information gathered by Citi Business News indicates that the Electronic Communications Tribunal will begin deliberations on the case brought to it by the four telecommunication operators by next week.
The four operators Airtel-Tigo, Glo, MTN and Vodafone have raised objections to the fine from the NCA.
The fines which were issued in November of 2018 saw AirtelTigo pick up the heftiest fine of GHC11,635,000 with Glo being fined GHc4,460,000, MTN fined GHc9,080,000 and Vodafone receiving a GHc8,890,000 fine.
The National Communications Authority (NCA) Act 769, 2008 Section 3(m) mandates the Authority to establish quality of service indicators and reporting requirements for Operators and Service Providers for the object for which it was established, which is to regulate provision of communications service in the country.
In a statement released in November last years, the NCA noted that it undertook a quality of Service monitoring in the Greater Accra, Eastern, Western, Northern Regions and two districts in the Ashanti Region in the phase one of a nationwide monitoring exercise.
This exercise according to the NCA enabled the Authority to determine the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) which were unable to meet their Licence Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in some District Capitals.
One of the main areas of contention for the telcos according to the information Citi Business News is picking up was how the mean opinion score which impacted heavily on their fines was arrived at.
According to the NCA the mean opinion score which is used to measure voice quality from a user’s perspective, is expressed as a single number in the range from 1 to 5, where the value of 1 corresponds to the lowest quality experienced by the end-user and 5 is the highest quality experienced.
Mobile Network Operators in Ghana are required by their licence to meet a minimum score of 3.5. When Citi Business News reached out to the Chamber of telecommunications for comments the chamber said it will rather wait for the tribunal to sit on the issue before it will make any public pronouncements due to the legal ramifications involved.
–
By: Bobbie Osei/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana