Communications Commission of Kenya to Monitor Quality of Mobile Telephone Services
16 October 2006
Ascom QVoice, the market-leading system for mobile network benchmarking and optimization, was selected by the Kenyan telecommunications regulating body to assist it in assuring service quality and expectations of subscribers. The aim of the agency is to validate network operator licensing agreements in terms of contractual QoS levels. Initial testing will be in heavily populated city centers and address key performance parameters including call drop rates, speech quality, service coverage and SMS delivery times.
"The new equipment will enable the Commission to do an independent verification of the quality of service performance," said Eng. John Waweru, CCK Director General. Previously, the commission had only limited capability to conduct quality of service tests and relied heavily on operator supplied data on network characteristics. The QVoice implementation will let the commission perform standardized service quality assessments. The objective is to bring Kenyan mobile telephony standards up on par with mature GSM markets of Western Europe, where customer retention through high service quality rather than mere new customer acquisition is the main market driver.
"We appreciate the opportunity to build upon our relationship with CCK and to provide quality of service benchmarking systems," said Beat Gerber, CEO of Ascom Mobile Test Solutions, he added: "We are also pleased to be able to support CCK in their commitment to verify service performance." "The Kenyan regulator order further demonstrates our belief, Gerber added, "that verification of service performance and benchmarking can have a direct impact on the quality of experience (QoE) for wireless customers."
QoS is of high importance to the Kenyan authorities, who sent two senior people to the Annual International QVoice User Group Conference held in Switzerland in September. Daniel K. Waturu, Telecom Compliance Manager, attending the event on behalf of the CCK, commented. "The conference came at an opportune time for the CKK. The quality of the conference presentations was wonderful and the social interaction superb." Mr Waturu is also an active participant in the ITU - T Study Group 12 for Voice Quality Assessment (the lead study group for QoS) a further indication of the government commitment to 'Quality' - not only in Kenya but throughout Africa and the world.
Service quality transparency is seen as a key customer retention factor in mature mobile markets, and the Kenyan regulating body envisions transplanting this orientation to the emerging Kenyan market. In obtaining QVoice, the Communications Commission of Kenya is signaling the country's mobile operators that network quality is serious business and will be enforced. They hope the two national operators, which have ties to leading European operators, will follow suit and acquire their own measurement equipment, conduct their own network testing and share the responsibility of delivering quality services to customers.
The purchase adds the Communications Commission of Kenya to the ever-expanding roster of QVoice customers spanning Africa, Europe, Middle East, Asia and the Americas.
