Almost two decades after the liberalisation of the telecoms sector, quality of service (QoS) remains a bad pain in subscribers’ neck. LUCAS AJANAKU writes on measures to address the issue by the regulator, others.
When her phone rang, she couldn’t pick the call because she was in the kitchen and was using a gas cooker.
The mother of three, who simply identified herself as Mrs Paul, begged her husband who was in the sitting room to pick the call since she had nothing to hide.
“I got the rude shock of my life when my husband picked the call. It was a male voice that started complaining about how I failed to keep the date I had given him. Shocked, my husband put the phone on speaker so everyone could hear the conversation. When my husband asked who he wanted to speak to, he ended the call,” she recalled.
According to her, had her husband not trusted her, that call would have ended her 25 years marriage.
Mrs Paul’s case is one out of several other such instances where subscribers have had to cope with call diversion, cross-talking, drop calls and other difficulties in using mobile phones, includng loading airtime. Challenges, such as these, are known as low quality of service (QoS) issues.
QoS is as old as the telecoms industry in the country. The CEO, Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof Garba Dambatta, has consistently frowned at low QoS while the carriers have also blamed environmental conditions for its prevalence.
Disturbed by this, there was a Public Hearing by the Joint Senate Committee on Communications; and Trade and Investments on: The Increasing Rate of Drop Calls and other Unwholesome Practices by Telecoms Network Operators in Nigeria that have Robbed Nigerians of their Hard Earned Billions of Naira last month.
Causes
The Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) identified some factors, such as infrastructure damage, bombed sites due to insurgency, illegal sites lock-outs, lack of statutory permits for infrastructure roll-out, lack of statutory permits for infrastructure roll-out, lack of ICT pans in large buildings, unstable power supply/prolonged power outage, proliferation of signal boosters and repeaters; and sub-standard mobile devices, as responsible for the drop calls.
ALTON Chairman, Gbenga Adebayo said operators continue to suffer various forms of infrastructure damage across the country, leading to sudden outages or poor QoS. A typical scenario is where hoodlums break into a site, kill or injure the guard on duty, dropped calls in the affected areas.
NCC’s interventions
NCC has taken several steps to improve QoS, despite many environmental challenges.
Through the monthly engagements with operators on QoS, the monthly QoS Key performance indicators (KPI) of operators are assessed, while areas of challenges are identified. The forum also allows for feedback of previously identified shortcomings; evaluate progress made, and set deliverables for next engagement session.
There is also the quarterly QoS Industry Working Group meetings and engagements with operators, vendors, and collocation service providers to assess QoS performance as an industry.The Group identifies underperforming licencees and set targets for all. Areas of challenges facing licensees are also identified and NCC’s areas of support are identified while the areas the government needed to intervene are also identified. These include the theft of telecom equipment on site, vandalism, illegal site shutdown by government agencies and communities.
The Commission engages with the Nigerian Governors Forum to align right of way (RoW) charges in line with what was agreed at the National Economic Council (NEC) to facilitate widespread rollout of telecom infrastructure.
There is also engagement with individual governors to reduce and eliminate the incidences of site shutdown by state government agencies while the regulator has unveiled new QoS measurements for assessing operators performance to ensure they align with subscriber experiences across all states.
There is measurement and QoS performance assessment of collocation service providers and internet service providers (ISPs). This ensured that players in the telecom ecosystem had QoS performance assessed and ensures there is an added incentive to provide optimal performance.
With the availability of 3G services, there is QoS performance in the application of the technology while it has deployed QoS measurement systems at the commission to enable near real time assessment of QoS across the country from the Commission’s office.
Promos are veritable ways of compromising QoS, but NCC assesses the likely QoS impact of promos on operators’networks before approval. “Promos approval is denied, if QoS impact is assessed to be negative,” it explained.
The introduction of mobile number portability (MNP) scheme was designed to create an incentive for operators to invest in their networks. Through the scheme, subscribers are able to move out of any non-performing network without losing their numbers.
“There is benchmarking drive test across the country to measure performance of each operator in a given area and identify coverage gaps to bridge them. Since network capacity constraints is identified as measure of poor performance, the NCC has mandated and received network expansion plans from operators for this year and will monitor strict compliance and implementation,” the Commission explained.
Way forward
ALTON says designation of telecoms infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII) will end the nightmare.
Section 3 (1) of the Cybercrime Act 2015 provides that The President may, on the recommendation of the National Security Adviser (NSA), designate any telecoms or Information Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure as CNII to be specially protected by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).
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