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

[Barrack Otieno]

Interesting Alice, i wonder whether this is applicable here.
Regards

On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 2:25 PM, alice <alice at apc.org> wrote:
> (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.
>
>
>
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Barrack O. Otieno
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