EDITORIAL: Address system failures – Business Daily

Airtel Kenya’s service outage on Monday left its 12.83 million subscribers out of reach for hours and without access to SMS, data and mobile financial services.

This kind of outage, in our view, is unacceptable given the technical hitch could have been avoided with proactive measures.

The latest Airtel outage calls for telcos to up their network infrastructure scrutiny to ensure uninterrupted service delivery through regular maintenance.

The law recognises the need for quality telecom services and stipulates the standards mobile operators must maintain to avoid stiff penalties in default.

Mobile services have become our way of life and such disruptions not only affect subscriber’s lives but also hurt businesses that depend on telcos in the delivery of services and products.

Apart from the Airtel outage on Monday, subscribers across networks still have content with other glitches such as dropped calls, poor reception as well as erratic data services.

Even though telcos have put measures in place to compensate affected mobile users, the operators should address the systemic weaknesses in their systems for efficient service delivery.