DAR ES SALAAM — Tanzania’s telecommunications regulator on Wednesday imposed fines amounting to 38.1 billion Tanzanian shillings (about 16 million U.S. dollars) for what it described as poor delivery of services.
Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) said in a statement that it had assessed the quality of telecommunications services in the last quarter of 2020 and found six mobile phone operators failed to meet certain required quality standards.
TCRA said it instructed the six phone operators — Airtel Tanzania Plc, MIC Tanzania Plc, Viettel Tanzania Plc, Vodacom Tanzania Plc, Zanzibar Telecom Plc and state-run TTCL Corporation — to use the fines by investing toward improving their service delivery quality within 90 days, adding that the instructions were agreed by the companies by signing contracts with TCRA.
The statement said any mobile phone operator that breached TCRA’s directive on improving their service delivery will face legal action. The assessment of the firms’ operations were done during October to December in 2020 in various regions across the country, said the statement. According to the statement, the assessment was based on network availability, call connection failure rate, call drop rate, call setup time, service coverage and call success rate.
