The five telecommunication companies operating in Ghana have been slapped with fines totalling 1.2 million Ghana cedis (about US$ 750,000) by the National Communications Authority (NCA), the telecommunication regulator, for providing poor quality services to their clients.
The punishment, which covers the third quarter of this year, forms part of the telecom regulator’s quest to sanction poor quality service delivery offered to clients and also ensure that consumers have value for money, the state-owned Daily Graphic reported Tuesday.
A report from NCA said Airtel, the country’s fourth largest telecom operator with 10 per cent of subscribers, suffered the heaviest fine of 350,000 Ghana cedis (US$ 218,750).
MTN, the country’s largest telecom company, and Expresso, the least patronised, were also fined 300,000 Ghana cedis (US$ 187,500) each. Vodafone was fined 150,000 Ghana cedis (about US$ 93,750), while tiGO was fined 100,000 Ghana cedis (about US$ 62,500).
The complaints are mainly frequent call drops, delays in call set-ups and call congestion.
The key performance indicators used in measuring the attainment of service quality were call setup time; call congestion rate and call drop rate.
