Department of Communications
A revised reporting format in respect of the electronic communications industry’s end-user and subscriber service charter has been published in the Government Gazette.
Issued by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), the new reporting format is immediately effective.
It was developed in terms of regulation 6(d) of the minimum standards for the charter.
These regulations were published on 24 July 2009 in notice 744 of Government Gazette 32431 and made under Electronic Communications Act 36 of 2005.
According to this notice, the charter and regulations apply to all electronic communications service (ECS) and electronic communications network service (ECNS) licensees operating in South Africa.
In terms of regulation 6(d), a licensee is required to prepare and submit six-monthly reports on the standards prescribed in regulation 4.
Regarding ECNS, this regulation states that licensees must:
• ensure that they achieve an average of 95% network service availability during the course of the reporting period;
• ensure that they achieve an average of 95% service-availability within their specified area of coverage over the same period;
• within 30 days of receiving a service application, attain a 90% success rate in meeting the service installation and activation requirements within the specified area of coverage; and
• meet the remaining 10% of requests for installation and activation within 40 days of each request concerned
Regarding the average time to activate both ECS and ECNS, regulation 4 states that all ECS and ECNS licensees must:
• attain a 90% success rate in providing the required service in the area of coverage concerned within seven days of receiving a service application from a qualifying end-user;
• meet the remaining 10% of requests for activation within 15 days of each application concerned; and
• where it is impossible to provide a service within the specified period, notify the qualifying service applicant concerned of the full reasons for this within seven days of receiving their request.
Also in terms of regulation 4:
• the percentage of connectivity failure rate, including dropped calls, should not exceed an average of 3% of all connections, over a period of six months, for all ECNS and ECS licensees;
• operator assisted calls must be answered within three minutes averaged over twelve months;
• all licensees are required to monitor their electronic communications networks 24 hours a day and seven days a week;
• on average, all ECNS and ECS licensees must maintain a 90% fault clearance rate for all faults reported within three days; and
• the remaining 10% of faults reported must be cleared within six days of each fault being reported.
The revised format can be found in notice 76 of Government Gazette 34978 dated 27 January 2012.
Sabinet Cape Town Office
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