[kictanet] Regulator penalises leading mobile companies for QoS issues by shortening their licence period

[alice]

(From Balancing Act)

Regulator penalises leading mobile companies for QoS issues by 
shortening their licence period

In an unexpected move, Niger’s regulator ARM has shortened the licence 
period for two of the country’s pan-continental mobile operators over 
Quality of Service (Qos) issues. QoS may become a battleground issue 
across the continent this year as regulators realise they have the power 
to insist that agreed standards are met and things improve. For 
operators, getting network capacity in harmony with demand is full of 
headaches. Russell Southwood feels their pain.

Last week Niger’s regulator Autorite de Regulation Multisectorielle (ARM 
announced that it had reduced the length of two mobile operators' 
licences in a row over quality of service, according to a Reuters 
report. The culprits are two of West Africa’s leading mobile operators, 
Zain and Moov (owned by Etisalat).

The 15-year concession awarded to Kuwait-based telecoms firm Zain in 
2000 was reduced by five years, according to ARM, until a return to the 
stated levels of service quality is achieved. Meanwhile, a 15-year 
licence awarded to Moov, the brand name of West African company 
Atlantique Telecom, also in 2000, has been cut by three years.

ARM is one of francophone West Africa’s most effective regulators and it 
has worked hard to liberalise Niger’s telecoms market over the last 
three years. The tactic of shortening the licence concession period is 
an interesting one. For although the operator’s do not have to pay a 
cent, they risk seeing their asset being devalued if they do not address 
the QoS issues.

Other regulators who have addressed QoS issues over the last three years 
include Senegal’s ARTP, Ghana’s NCA and Nigeria’s NCC. In both Nigeria 
and Senegal, quality of service (particularly network congestion and 
outages) has been a national debate. Some have been more successful in 
calling operators to order, whilst others have talked tough but made 
little impact.

Contrast Nigeria where NCC lead a very public campaign to improve 
quality followed by fines with Ghana where NCA talked tough about fines 
but never followed through. In the case of the latter, talking to 
operators behind closed doors has had little impact on the country’s 
chronic congestion, particularly on the MTN network.

Five years ago a senior manager of a mobile operator explained to me how 
investment tended to follow increases in customers rather than the other 
way round. Whilst things have undoubtedly changed since that point, 2010 
is a tight year for raising CAPEX. MTN’s promotion aimed at encouraging 
users to make less use of congested cell sites was innovative but is no 
substitute for having enough capacity.

But if only it was as simple as spending enough money to put in capacity 
to meet peak voice demand. With operators now seeking to become Internet 
operators with 3G and all the other acronyms above it, they are taking 
narrow pipe networks that were never designed for data and trying to 
retrofit them to deliver. Globally mobile operators both want to 
encourage data use to combat falling ARPUs but ration it so that their 
underpowered networks are not overwhelmed.

African mobile operators are not so different but they have adopted 
different strategies. Operators like Safaricom and MTN have sought to 
separate out their data flows by creating separate Wi-MAX networks for 
data. The solution being discussed in Europe is femtocells where the 
equivalent of a mini-base station is put in the user’s house. However, 
another relatively costly CPE is likely to play less well in cash-tight 
African markets.

So here’s the dilemma for the mobile operators: do they really want to 
become both voice and data operators, offering bandwidth heavy 
applications like Triple Play? Or is data just a tactical side-bet 
they’ve been forced into to stay ahead? Many of the major operators are 
building large fibre networks in their major markets which mirror their 
competitors’ investments. Not everyone can be a winner out of this game 
if national backbone charges come down under pressure from new low 
international fibre charges which arrived in East Africa in 2009 and 
will come to West Africa this year.

Whilst 3G modems are undoubtedly better than many of Africa’s 
over-contended Wi-Fi hot-spots, Africa’s mobile operators have yet to 
prove that they can create reliable Internet access with good QoS. 
Without this guarantee, mobile Internet runs the risk of becoming the 
substitute alternative rather than the service of choice. Unfortunately, 
with honourable exceptions, Africa’s mobile operators have yet to 
demonstrate that they can deliver increasingly improving services for 
both voice and data.

Correction: Issue 486: Former Rwandatel CEO Wanted Over Missing Funds

Rwandatel Management has no case against former CEO.

On Tuesday December 22 2009, The New Times published an article entitled 
“Former Rwandatel CEO wanted over missing funds”. The article was 
written by Ignatius SSUNA and Eugene MUTARA and claimed that Rwandatel, 
Rwanda National Police and Interpol are all tight lipped about this case.

The Management of Rwandatel SA would like to refute these baseless 
claims alleging that the company has presented a case to court against 
Mr. Kariningufu regarding an amount of money that has gone missing.
Rwandatel SA would like to bring to your attention and to your readers 
that while it is factual that Mr. Kariningufu Patrick is no longer an 
employee of Lap Green, neither Lap Green nor its Rwandan telecom 
company, Rwandatel SA, of which he was first Chief Technical Officer and 
later Chief Executive Officer for years has brought any case against him 
in the courts of law in Rwanda or beyond. Management has not given any 
details “of the case” simply because there is no case.
We would like to recommend that going forward answers to all pertinent 
questions or clarifications surrounding any story be sought before any 
article is published. We would appreciate if all our media partners 
doing their research would contact Rwandatel officials or other 
competent authorities for comment before going out with such defamatory 
stories. We take this opportunity to recognize all members of the press 
corps who continue to respect the duties entrusted to them by the public 
and continue to go out of their way to establish the truth.