The Communications Authority in Kenya(CA) has issued new guidelines requiring telecommunication companies to give credit rebates to customers in cases of network outages.
In the new directive, Safaricom, Airtel and Telkom will have to compensate users affected by network failures, to an amount equivalent to the airtime they could have used during that period. The regulator has borrowed from a global trend of operators setting a refund policy, pushing them to go the extra mile in improving their telecommunications infrastructure.
The policy, however, exonerates operators in cases where outages are caused by scheduled maintenance, natural disaster or accidental damage to infrastructure. “A licensee shall develop and implement an outage credit policy in situations where service is unavailable due to system interruptions and not as a result of scheduled and publicized maintenance, emergency, natural disaster or force majeure, accidental damage of infrastructure by third parties, terrorism, and vandalism,” the guidelines state in part.
The CA is expected to publish further guidelines on how rebates are to be given, noting, “The outage credit policy shall detail circumstances when credit, rebate or refund applies, process, procedure and timelines when rebate, credit or refund shall be issued to customer/subscriber.”
