Postal and Telecommunications (Quality of Service) (Amendment) Regulations, 2024 (No. 1)

These regulations put teeth into Zimbabwe's telecoms quality-of-service rules by adding measurable targets and, for the first time, a schedule of money penalties.

Enforcement now runs on a three-strike clock. Where a licensee fails to fix a faulty cell within at least 15 days in a 30-day assessment period, POTRAZ issues a first warning. If it stays broken for a further 15 days — counted consecutively or cumulatively within a 60-day period — a second warning follows. If it is still not fixed for another 15 days, the licensee becomes liable to a penalty under the new Seventh Schedule. Operators must also submit performance measurement files hourly, and the Authority publishes monthly quality-of-service reports in the first week of the following month.

The penalties, expressed in US dollars or the ZiG equivalent: up to US$200 per cell in breach for failing call and data KPIs over a three-month period; up to US$200 per cell for SMS delivery failures; up to US$5 000 per infringement for failing fixed data and internet speed standards; US$5 000 for a fixed data or internet outage exceeding three hours plus up to US$5 000 for each additional hour; up to US$5 000 per instance for interconnection link failures; and up to US$5 000 a month for failing to submit network performance data.

New standards go into the First Schedule for cellular service. Data Service Access Success Rate must be at least 95%, Data Service Drop Rate at most 2%, and Cell Availability at least 67% — which is only 16 hours a day, a target that quietly accepts substantial daily downtime. For 4G, minimum downlink speed is 5Mbps and uplink 1Mbps. A data reliability and integrity indicator of at least 70% applies to the raw OMC-R data operators supply.

Beyond fines, the Authority may demand explanations, order remedial action within a set period, direct a licensee to compensate consumers for poor service, or exempt particular cells from performance requirements based on deployment or operational circumstances. The definitions of "warning cell" and "grace period" are removed and "faulty cell", "key performance indicator" and "Quality of Service" are redefined.

Two drafting points worth noting: the Seventh Schedule as published is numbered 1, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 9, with items 2, 7 and 8 missing, and its heading cross-refers to section 9(3)(d) when the fining power sits in the new section 9(7)(d).