NCA ends public consultation on Quality Service Regulations

The National Communications Authority (NCA) on Tuesday brought its public consultation workshops to an end, which sought to explain the technicalities in the draft Quality of Service (QoS) Regulations, 2019.

The International Telecommunications Union defines QoS as the ability to provide different priority to different applications, users, or data flows, or to guarantee a certain level of performance to the flow of data.

The QoS Regulations would ensure that mobile service providers complied with approved standards.

The workshop in Accra, which was the last in the series, was to enable participants to make meaningful inputs to the draft Regulations. Similar to others held in Tamale and Kumasi, it brought together consumers, consumer advocacy groups, media representatives and the public to make inputs.

The NCA undertook a fundamental review of the QoS landscape, which has no existing regulations and was consulting the public on the first draft. Mr Joe Anokye, the Director-General of the NCA, in a speech read on his behalf, said it had became necessary to develop the QoS Regulations to reflect technological advancements that had sprung up over time. He said the NCA was limited, to a large extent, by the current outdated key performance indicators (KPI) on QoS. The new Regulations, if approved, would improve the operation and performance of interconnected networks and enable the Authority to implement a QoS framework. Mr Anokye said this would allow the quality of service providers to be measured, reported and published based on defined parameters and measurements methodologies as provided in the regulations. He said stakeholder involvement and the sharing of information was vital for the efficient regulation of the electronic communications industry, hence the opportunity for the public to make their contribution.

Mr Henry Kanor, the NCA Deputy Director-General in-charge of Technical Operations, advised the public against buying inferior and cheap mobile phones.

He said the sensitivity of such hand sets was very low, making transmission and reception poor, hence people using them struggled to make or receive calls.

Discussion of the draft Regulations was led by Mr Kwame Baah-Acheamfour, the Deputy Director for Regulatory Administration of the NCA, with support from other members of the Legal, Consumer and Corporate Affairs Divisions.

Next on the line-up of actions include consultations with service providers, after which the NCA would consolidate all changes before processing the draft Regulations for review and further approval.