Kenya’s telecommunications regulator is raising the bar on service quality standards, aiming for a compliance threshold of 90%. This move puts major players like Safaricom, Airtel, and Telkom at risk of facing increased fines and county-specific penalties as the regulatory push for enhanced network performance intensifies nationwide.
According to the Business Daily, the Communications Authority is proposing to elevate the quality of service compliance standard to 90%. If this proposal is accepted, the three leading operators—Safaricom PLC, Airtel, and Telkom Kenya—could incur steeper fines.
The regulator is currently reviewing the framework for assessing mobile network performance and plans to implement quarterly evaluations instead of the annual assessments currently in place. In addition, the scope of testing would expand from 21 measures to 38 service quality metrics.
The ongoing public consultation on the proposal includes new county-level enforcement mechanisms, which means penalties could be applied separately in each county, in addition to companies’ rollout obligations.
The implications of these changes are significant; operators that fail to comply with the proposed quality standards for call performance and service outages could face fines of up to 0.2% of their revenue.
Under the suggested 90% compliance target, none of the major telecommunications companies would meet the standard, according to the latest quality-of-service reports. As of June 2024, Safaricom scored 85.71%, Airtel 79.74%, and Telkom 55.02%.
In its quality of experience survey for June 2025, the regulator reported that Safaricom stands at 70%, Airtel at 68.4%, Telkom at 60%, and Jamii Telkom at 58.8%.
These scores comprise multiple factors: end-to-end service performance (60%), network performance (25%), and customer experience (15%). End-to-end service performance reflects actual user experiences, including call completion rates, data speeds, missed calls, and connection delays. Network performance is evaluated by coverage across different regions, while customer experience is gauged through surveys focused on billing, complaint resolution, and support.
The new regulatory framework will shift enforcement from national averages to localised county results. It will include compliance for 4G and 5G services, covering VoLTE and 5G voice performance.
The Communications Authority stated in its draft framework, “It is proposed to raise the threshold for compliance from 80% to 90%.” They further emphasised that “in the event of non-compliance by a licensee, penalties and/or other sanctions will be enforced based on individual counties as per the Act.”
These proposals resurrect familiar challenges for telecommunications operators. In 2024, the Communications Authority noted issues with Airtel and Telkom Kenya regarding service quality, citing high call failure rates and poor data performance.
