Telkom Kenya and Airtel are giving their subscribers a raw deal in quality of services, a new survey by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) has found.
- The survey results puts the two telcos scores at below the acceptable performance target of 80 per cent.
- According to the assessment for the Financial Year 2022/2023, Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya scored 79 per cent and 65 per cent respectively.
- Industry leader Safaricom attained an overall performance of 90 per cent.
“Aging Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) and sparse deployment of BTS is the major contributing factor to the failure by Airtel and Telkom Kenya to meet the KPI thresholds. The two operators showed good performance in urbanized areas while having below average coverage in rural areas and far-flung areas,” CA noted in the report.
According to the report, which details results of End-to-End quality of service, network performance quality of service and the quality of experience assessment, Airtel and Telkom failed to not only meet their coverage targets, but also a number of the most critical quality of service key performance indicators and particularly the unsuccessful call ratio and data internet KPIs which is an indicator for coverage and internet accessibility respectively.
“Telkom Kenya network appear to limit their optimization in such a way that network coverage rapidly diminishes after about 5 km from the town centers and serving cells,” the regulator added in its assessment, “It was further noted that the mobile network operators are not optimally even in areas where they rolled out services long ago.”
- Safaricom peak performance scores were in Busia, Kiambu, Kwale, Mombasa, Lamu, Nyandarua, Nairobi and Mombasa, while its lowest score was 63.5 per cent in Vihiga and Kajiado Counties.
- Telkom Kenya performed lowest in terms of both data services and coverage, especially in rural counties where it was poor or completely non existent. .
- Airtel scored best -90.91 per cent- in Machakos, Mombasa, Nairobi, Kericho, Siaya, Muranga, and lowest at 45.45 per cent in Baringo and Laikipia, Homabay.
According to the regulator, “…network upgrades and optimization due to aging equipment, changing demographics and technology seem[] to pose challenges to all networks.”
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