South African fixed and mobile operators all meet the Independent Communications Authority of SA’s (ICASA’s) minimum requirements for service availability and call failure rates, despite consumers’ perceptions to the contrary.
However, the networks did not meet ICASA’s targets for clearing faults within the required time, with Vodacom, MTN and Telkom all missing the target. Neotel met ICASA’s requirements, and Cell C argued it did not experience any faults as defined in the regulations.
The network uptime and call connection rate findings are contrary to consumers’ own experiences, judging by the amount of complaints on consumer forums such as Hellopeter and micro-blogging site Twitter.
The authority has released compliance reports for telecommunication licence holders covering the period between April 2010 and March 2011. ICASA launched the end-user and subscriber service charter in the middle of 2009 and today published the second set of reports since its regulations came into affect.
In terms of ICASA’s charter, operators must provide ICASA with reports every six months, showing networks are available more than 95% of the time, less than 3% of calls fail, and 90% of faults are cleared within three days. If they do not meet these requirements, they face fines.
According to ICASA’s compliance reports, SA’s largest mobile operator, Vodacom, achieved almost 100% network availability for voice, data and SMS services. Vodacom also achieved 99.51% service availability in the first six months of the year, and 100% in the second half.
Vodacom’s connectivity failure rate did not exceed 3%, says the compliance report. However, the company’s fault clearance rate fell below ICASA’s 90% target in the first six months of the year, although this figure improved to 94% in the second half.
MTN, SA’s second-largest network operator, had an average network service availability of almost 100% for the year covered in the report. The operator also achieved almost 100% service availability.
MTN’s connectivity failure rate on voice calls does not exceed an average of 1% of all connections, which meets ICASA’s target.
However, its fault clearance rate does not meet ICASA’s 90% standard, as, in the first six months of the year, the company only cleared 87.5% of faults in three days, and 86% in the second half. The remainder of the faults are cleared within six days.
Cell C also had almost 100% network and service availability. More than 97% of all installation and activation requests were activated within 30 days, according to the compliance report.
The operator also met ICASA’s target for connectivity, with a 0.6% failure rate in the first six months of the year, and 1.37% in the second half. Cell C says it did not experience any “faults” as defined by the regulations.
Fixed-line operator Telkom met most of ICASA’s requirements, with network and service availability of almost 100% during the compliance report period. Its connectivity failure rate is also below ICASA’s 3% target.
However, Telkom only cleared just over 70% of faults within three days, missing ICASA’s 90% target. It also did not clear the balance of the problems within six days.
Neotel, SA’s second national operator, had an average network availability of 95% in the first half of the year, and 99.97% in the second six months. The company’s service availability also met ICASA’s targets.
Neotel’s connectivity failure rate also met the authority’s minimum requirements and it cleared faults within the stipulated time.
Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says he is not surprised that the operators met ICASA’s requirements as people perceive network performance to be lower than it is. He explains consumers remember when calls are dropped, or do not connect, but not when networks function successfully.
