Thursday, March 28, 2024

ZICTA drags all three mobile phone companies to court for poor service

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ZICTA has instituted criminal proceedings against at all the three mobile phone service providers namely Airtel, MTN Zambia and ZAMTEL for failure to meet minimum standards of quality of service.

ZICTA has resolved to take remedial measures relating to enforcement of quality of service in order to protect public interest in pursuant of the information and Communication Technologies Act No. 15 of 2009.

The deteriorating levels of Quality of Service has made communication difficult and resulted in increased public outcry and negative impact on ease of doing business in Zambia.

Under the published Quality of Service Guidelines, ZICTA has an option to invoke either administrative or criminal sanctions arising from the failure to adhere to the set parameters relating to quality of service.

In line with the foregoing, the Board of the Authority, on June 27, 2013 authorized Management’s decision to prosecute all the three mobile service providers for offering poor quality of service to the public.

The Authority, on July 4, 2013, instituted criminal proceedings against the mobile service providers on two counts of failure to meet minimum standards of quantity of service as specified and published by the Authority contrary to Section 67 of the ICT Act and one count of failure to comply with a provision of the Quality of Service Guidelines issued by the Authority contrary to Section 79(1) of the ICT Act respectively.

This is according to a statement issued by ZICTA Public Relations Manager Ngabo Nankonde.

36 COMMENTS

  1. Its high time ZICTA showed some seriousness, I even thought these guys are being nicely oiled in their pockets by the mobile operators. Bring on the 4th mobile operator to bring in more competition.

    • #Big j,you and ZICTA are wrong,its not these mobile operators per se that render poor service.It is rather,the usual poor zambian work culture that is to blame. Its the same culture that has ensured we don’t have a single zambian company of int’l repute since our work ethic is very poor.Why do these phone carriers succeed in other countries if they were that bad?

  2. CELLZ is govt owned (I stand to be corrected), are u telling us that ur suing the govt inderectly?? Its tricky there ba ZICTA, maybe try bringing another competitor coz these three companies banyanya mwandi… Even the charges per second or when crossing network is actually too high… Calling Congo on Airtel is daylight robbery ine ukufwaya ukulila. Vodafone should be brot in to compete in IMO

  3. About time the empty suits at ZICTA woke up….how long has it taken them to notice this? Their services are awful every time I call a Zambian mobile number via phone card the line will abruptly cut 15 minutes in the conversation meaning that when I call again they will charge another connection fee. I used to assume that it was due to a low battery on the other side BUT this is a scam to racket up their profits.

    Zambians deserve better for the high rates they are paying every minute!!

  4. if am head of AIRTEL and MTN I would not worry or bother about this lawsuit. Worse still if am head of ZAMTEL, I would not lose sleep over this either.

    That is the problem of making a Lawyer to lead a Technical Organisation and I wonder why PF has not replaced her. You need a technocrat to lead ZICTA to understand these issue. All that lady thinks is suing because she is a lawyer and that is the only way she knows how to solve problems.

    These case are going to take long to work their way through our overloaded courts and meanwhile Zambians will continue being ripped off. Besides ZICTA will lose because I doubt they even understand the QoS docs written in technical language.

    WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE IS TAKE ON 1 Firm at a TIME and just suspend their licence.

    • It’s a good step in the right direction. The head of ZICTA does not need to understand QoS techno junkie to know how bad the services are. Even my mbuya kwa Msisi knows that cellphone and data services in Zambia sucks

  5. and next tym i hear about this please it shud dat de mobile providers have improved…………………

  6. Suspending their tradding licence will force them to take corrective measure and to save their business. The Onus and pressure will be on the provider to work the court process. Other providers will notice and jack up their service.

    ZAMTEL is easy to solve, since it is a Government institution and makes no sense in Government suing itself, all they need to do is fire the ENTIRE ZAMTEL Management or at least threaten to fire them.

    That is how I would solve this one.

    Going to court is a waste of tax payer’s money and mark my words this case will take years to work its way through the courts. ZICTA has power now to compel providers without even having to go to court.

    Oh also fire

  7. Cellphone companies in Zambia is a big fraud. And some politician must be benefiting for such poor services to continue despite complaints from the public.

  8. Ba LT not everyone acessing yo online news know ZICTA! Yo reporting is extremely pathetic, you need to go to skool. This is comboni reporting at its highest

  9. ZICTA, where have you been? Zambians have been exploited for years and your voice has not been heard. Now work towards making call charges within and between networks the same.Why should consumers be subjected to high charges when calling another network. Also encourage the different providers to work together on roaming. We should not have an area where there is say MTN network only and one fails to make a phone call using Airtel. One should automatically be switched to the available signal when his/her service provider network is not available.

  10. Why take them to court? The best thing should have been to fine them heavily and give them warnings in case they do not pull up their soaks. Hit them where it hurts the most i.e. the pocket. Courts are a waste of time and the issue may end up dragging for a long time.

    • Spot on….an ultimatum would have been appropriate. They could have gone further and told us which of the three had the highest complaints.

  11. Bring Vodacom to Zambia so that there could more than enough competition for these mobile thieves operators.

  12. @10 U MUST BE AN IDI OT FROM THE SO CALLED MA YARD. DON’T U KNOW FROM KOMBONI THERE ARE PIPO THAT ARE EVEN MORE EDUCATED AND WISER THAN U FOOL? WE NEED ANOTHER CPANY THO ZICTA MUST NOT BE DOCILE.

  13. in zambia we respect so much qualifications/papers as opposed to performance. The CEO for zamtel is the most underperforming CEO in the whole of sub saharan africa. When lapgreen was there we could see zamtel moderning itself. currently its a company back to its stone age mentality. Employees are arrogant. The best for zamtel is to fire incompetent CEO,appoint a performer.

  14. Some one to sue LCC for poorest services eg failing to clean up the City which is turned into animal kraal or chicken run by street vendors.

  15. Zicta bring vodacom,cane the curent mobile opetators its too much fr them this far.Infact u ve acted late.Work independently.Viva Zicta.

  16. Really the services are poor let them buy new machines and computers. It seems as if we are still using manual.

  17. its time these guys give us quality service for the money we pay.zamtel customer care is impossible to connect and the press 1 to contiue or hang up to exit ala nelibwe for phone lilapwa.Airtel naeve fima who called kupaka and text messages evenat nite.ZICTA keep the spirit infact its we the consumer to sue amaguys aba.Ama rates to high why i pay more to call my brother in DRC than India.Come on guys improve.

  18. Calling Zambia is always an ordeal. Its time our Country caught up with the rest of the progressive world. The way forward is to have both litigation AND competition. That is how other Countries have developed.

  19. This has been long over due, some companies especially airtel where Indians are cheating them on quality. They even go to cheat their Group CEO (Manoj n SBM )wen they come by moving good operating modules to the route he is likely to use (International Airport, Great East road, addis abba then Taj hotel) while other subs are left with poor working equipment very amazing. These are public secrets at Airtel and ZICTA. Also visits by Ministers are useless as they just end up with IPADS they forget what the went for. Zambia can do better we need ZICTA dissolved (back to ministry) as currently they cant take heavy punitive measures on the mobile co since it affects their cashflow hence the law suit.

  20. Clients taken for granted. But there must be a limit to mistreating clients! For all that money earned and even blantantly stollen from clients they still provide poor service. Seems customers have no rights in the eyes of these squint eyed fellows with eyes only focused on profit and not on the quality of service they provide. Punish them for the crimes of poor service delivery they render. They deserve a punishment of great magnitude.

  21. When they say poor service what exactly are they talking about? Is it the quality of the signals in both urban, peri-urban and rural areas? The government could spearhead the improvment of the service by investing in the backbone of the telecommunications infrastructure and then charge the private sector for the use. Then again governments are not good at running businesses. ZICTA is an authority and my worry is on how much authority the organisation can wield on the service providers, apart from collecting subscriptions.

  22. I recently had an opportunity to travel back home to Zambia. The phone system their is horrible and expensive. Phone companies are making huge profits out of poor fellow Zambians.
    The minutes (air-time) that you have to buy to use your phone does not make any sense. If you are a business man and wish to talk to a number of people or just one person for a long time on phone, you have to be ready to spend a good amount of money.
    The best that these companies can do is to offer contract phones for usage. What I mean by this is that you pay a fixed amount of money e.g K450 as a monthly fee usage. This would give you unlimited number of minutes and internet usage per month. The problem is that someone has interest in all this.
    ZICTA, please pass some regulations so people can enjoy phone…

  23. The poor service or signal that you get is because there are not many towers installed all over so that you can get good reception. They need to install strong towers in areas of operations.
    I think we need strong people with authority to put things straight. If we can stop the mentality of first wanting to enrich self before doing your job, Zambia can be a far much better country than any other country in Africa. There is high potential to do well.

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