Communications Authority of Kenya, has revealed that only Safaricom PLC achieved the minimum compliance threshold of 80 percent for key performance indicators (KPIs) in the country’s telecommunication market last year. The assessment covered three components: End-to-End Quality of Service (QoS), Network Performance QoS (NP), and Quality of Experience (QoE).
Safaricom successfully met the 80% target by attaining an overall performance score of 90%. In contrast, Airtel Kenya Networks Kenya Limited and Telkom Kenya Limited fell short, achieving overall performance scores of 79% and 65%, respectively, against the 80% target.
The report highlighted that both Airtel Kenya and Telkom Kenya Networks not only failed to meet their coverage targets but also struggled with critical QoS KPIs, particularly the “Unsuccessful Call Ratio” and Data Internet KPIs, indicating coverage and internet accessibility issues.
The underperformance of Airtel and Telkom Kenya was largely attributed to aging Base Transceiver Stations (BTSs) and limited BTS deployment. While both carriers demonstrated satisfactory performance in urbanized areas, their coverage in rural and remote areas was below average.
The three components of the survey included End-to-End QoS, Network Performance QoS (NP), and Quality of Experience (QoE). Voice Telephony (Speech) parameters analyzed various aspects such as unsuccessful call ratio, dropped call ratio, call set-up time, voice quality (MOS, POLQA), and handover.
Data parameters focused on local websites and common search engines, examining factors like latency, data transfer failure ratio, throughput of successful data transfer, internet accessibility, HTTP set-up failure ratio, HTTP set-up time, HTTP completion failure ratio, and HTTP completion time.
SMS parameters measured successful SMS ratio, completion rate for SMS, and end-to-end delivery time for SMS. The report emphasized that market stratification and competition significantly influenced Telkom Kenya and Airtel’s performance. The regulatory body pledged to implement interventions that would balance the market, support smaller players, and foster effective competition and growth.
