Telecoms operator with most complaints revealed

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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Last week the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) presented its Annual Report 2008/2009 in parliament, focusing on various areas of its operations including consumer affairs.

ICASA said that over the last year it processed a total of 2,155 complaints involving issues like billing problems, faulty handsets, number portability and postal problems.  ICASA further summarized the distribution of complaints across operators, and the results were somewhat surprising. 

Telkom received the most complaints with 21% of the total complaints, followed by Cell C (19%), Vodacom (19%) and MTN (18%).  What is unexpected is that Cell C notched up the same number of complaints as Vodacom – and more than MTN – despite the fact that it has only around 10% market share in the local cellular market.

ICASA itself accounted for 8% of all complaints while other ISPs and broadband providers like MWEB and iBurst made up 14% of the total complaints received by the regulator.  According to the report Neotel accounted for 0% of the total complaints.

Telecoms operator complaints – discussion