New regulations for mobile network to be implemented by end of year

A new Quality of Service regulation for the communications sector is expected to come into effect by the end of this year.

The draft regulations, which was developed by the National Communications Authority (NCA), is currently undergoing public consultations for their inputs.

Already, stakeholders including the Bank of Ghana, Data Protection Commission and some mobile network operators have submitted their inputs to the regulations to the NCA.

At the latest consultation workshop in Accra yesterday, Henry Kanor, Deputy Director General, Technical Operations, NCA, said the new regulations was to address existing gaps in the Key Performance Index (KPIs) contained in licences for mobile network operators.

He said the revision of the quality of service regulations was necessary as the current one, developed 15 years ago, did not take into account new technologies and innovations.

“When the current regulations were developed, we did not have WhatsApp, mobile money services, and other mobile applications. As a result, it is silent on these technological advancements. We are revising it to capture all these so that service providers will know what is expected of them and consumers will also know what to expect,” he stated.

To ensure strict enforcement, Mr Kanor stated that the NCA had upgraded its monitoring with modern sophisticated equipment to measure the KPIs and would duly apply sanctions when necessary.

He said the new regulations, if approved, would improve the operation and performance of interconnected networks and enable the authority implement a quality of service framework.

This, he explained would allow the quality of service delivered by service providers to be measured, reported, and published based on defined parameters and measurement methodologies as provided in the regulations.

Following the consultations, Mr Kanor stated that the authority would collate all the inputs and present it to the Ministry of Communications for review before being forwarded to Parliament for passage.

Kwame Baah-Acheamfour, Deputy Director of Regulatory Administration, NCA, said the regulations was intended to address range of services including digital financial services, mobile voice service, infrastructure services, customer care, internet data services, interconnection and basic telephony services.

It would be categorised under four key pillars including service availability, service accessibility, service integrity and service retainability, he added.

The NCA, he said, aims to produce realistic regulations that set out achievable targets and ensure customers were provided with the best of communications services.

The Chief Executive of Consumer Protection Agency, Kofi Kapito, called on the NCA to intensify enforcement of the regulations, if approved, to ensure that customers were provided with the best communications services.