Daryl Vaz, minister of science, energy, telecommunications, and transport, says his ministry is collaborating with the Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) to place greater focus on implementing policies to improve access to telecommunications in the next 100 days.

Vaz, who made the announcement in Parliament on Tuesday, October 10, said in the next 100 days focus will be placed on implementing policies relating to quality of service standards for the telecommunication sector.

“Therefore, in the next 100 days, it is expected that the OUR working with the ministry and after consultation with me, will promulgate and operationalise regulations relating to quality of service standards. Among others, these regulations will place on the licensees to measure and report on 21 fixed and mobile quality-of-service parameters to include fault repair rate, dropped call rate, mobile network availability rate, broadband availability rate, latency rate and data transmission speed,” he said.

The telecommunications minister also noted that the rules will allow the OUR to publish any information on the quality of standards so that the public can be made aware of any licensee that is not complying with the minimum standards.

In relation to customer service calls, Vaz said: “No more than two per cent of on-net calls should result in dropped calls, in relation to calls falling within the percentage of worst affected cell no more than three per cent shall result in dropped calls, percentage of worse affected cells refers to the percentage of calls having a drop rate of more than two per cent in the measurement period”.

Similarly, a minimum of 95 per cent of customer service calls must be connected successfully and not more than five per cent of these calls should encounter congestion, a busy signal or no reply.

Among the other standards that telecommunication operators will be held to is providing improved broadband access to customers, with a target of 99.95 per cent.