Utl registers highest rate of blocked calls

Kampala. Uganda Telecom (Utl) registered the highest rate of blocked calls in 2018, according to the Quality of Service Report released recently.
The report, which measures the performance of telecoms in relation to service delivery also found that Utl dropped more calls than any other telecom largely going way above UCC’s accepted 2 per cent.
Utl, which is now owned by Taleology Holdings GIB registered the worst performance in Mbarara and Masaka recording 84 per cent and 15 per cent respectively in blocked calls.
Blocked calls are measured by the number of attempts that fail to connect while dropped calls are those disconnected before a customer completes their call.
The report was compiled for the period running between August to December 2017 and August to September 2018.
The survey considered all major telecoms including Utl, MTN, Airtel and Africell covering diferent regions.
Key among the surveyed districts were Mbale, Soroti, Iganga, Jinja, Gulu, Soroti, Mbarara, Kabale, Kasese, Fortportal, Kampala and Masaka.
Mr Ibrahim Bbosa, the UCC consumer affairs manager, told Daily Monitor yesterday that calls are blocked because of the failure by a telecom to sufficiently invest in the system to handle traffic.
This, he said, is more common especially when the system has been overwhelmed.
“The system is designed in a way that if it is not likely to carry your call, they would rather not take it,” he said, emphasising the need for telecoms to invest in infrastructure.
Utl has been grappling with low system investment that continues to affect its services.
Government recently placed it under administration before it was partly sold to Nigerian firm - Taleology Holdings GIB - which now owns 67 per cent shares.
However, the telecom performed well in Jinja where it only registered 0.8 per cent of blocked calls.
MTN, which invested more than Shs800m in its infrastructure upgrades, registered the least dropped calls, registering only 10.1 per cent in Mbarara, where all telecoms performed poorly.
Airtel registered its highest rate of blocked calls in Kasese, recording about 22.3 per cent in the district.
Fort Portal registered the least number of blocked calls with all telecoms including Utl recording less than 2 per cent, below UCC’s target.
Ms Sumin Namaganda, the Airtel public relations manager told Daily Monitor that their performance has since December 2018 tremendously improved registering 0.25 per cent of blocked calls and 0.4 per cent of dropped calls.
“Our call success rate was [during the period] 99.7 per cent compared to UCC’s target of 98 per cent,” she said.
Africell had an overall average performance of 3 per cent but registered an overshoot in Kampala recording 7 per cent of blocked calls.
However, Mr Edgar Karamagi, the Africell public relations manager, disputed the findings, saying the telecom’s blocked rate has never gone beyond 1 per cent in Kampala.
“We monitor these performance indicators for our business interactions and also submit a report to UCC on a monthly basis,” he said.
While blocked calls inconvenience customers, according to Mr Bbosa, dropped calls increase the cost of making phone calls especially those on a minute plan.
“If I am on a per minute plan, even if I speak for two seconds and the call is dropped, I am charged a minute so customers feel they are being cheated in that way.” Mr Bbosa said.