Is quality a right, even on a low budget?

The definition of quality is always contentious since it means different things to different people. 

In the telecommunications sector, quality of service as defined by the Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) is the level of performance a service provider provides to its subscribers.

However, performance levels have both soft or customer-related, and hard, or technical, elements which should measured differently.

The time taken to get through to a customer service line and get your issue resolved is an example of a customer-related element. Some customer call centres are always congested and difficult to get through because their ratio of call-agents to customer base is too low.

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What is worse, once you finally get through and log your complaint, it is days, or sometimes weeks, before your complaint is resolved.  Such a performance level is completely unacceptable and the service provider should be called to order by the regulator.

Technical examples of quality of service include the time taken to download a music file or video, the time taken to successfully deliver an SMS or the number of dropped calls in a given duration.

How many times do you try to connect to your internet service provider before successfully getting online, or stay connected without unplanned interruptions?

All these are technical aspects of the quality of service and are some of the most contested - particularly by service providers. 

Indeed, a quality of service report published by the CA a year ago based on these parameters was rejected outright by most operators.

Some operators disputed the quality scores while others questioned the methods and measurement tools used to arrive at the scores. Others went ahead to publish their own contrary versions of quality of service reports.

COLLUDING TO PROFIT

Clearly, the fight between service providers and the CA with respect to quality is not about to end. 

On one hand, the CA is mandated to ensure that the consumers are protected from service providers who may want to exploit their ignorance at the altar of profiteering.

On the other, you have providers who believe that quality is subjective and varies according to a customer’s budget. This, after all, is the basis for differentiated services.

A customer may subscribe to a 1mbs, 5mbs or 10mbs internet link based on their budget, knowing full well that each of these links will offer different levels of quality.

Therefore, services providers argue, regulators are not entitled to dictate a particular quality of service without factoring in the corresponding costs of delivering it. In other words, the customer’s budget, rather than the regulator’s targets, should dictate the quality of service.

Furthermore, the customer can always vote with their feet by moving to the competitor’s network in the event they are unsatisfied with a particular provider’s quality of service.

Both arguments are valid. 

Regulation of service quality is indeed necessary, since service providers can easily collude to provide substandard service and profit obscenely at the customer's expense.

However, regulatory intervention without giving competition a chance to stabilise quality issues may be counterproductive in some cases.  Unless there are clear cases of market failure, competition within a free market environment is often the best regulator for quality of service issues.

Mr Walubengo is a lecturer at the Multimedia University of Kenya, Faculty of Computing and IT. Email: [email protected], Twitter: @jwalu