Kenyan telecommunication companies have been directed to comply with internationally accepted quality of service (QoS) standards or risk having their licenses revoked.

This is according to Kenya’s ICT cabinet secretary Fred Matiangi, who expressed his disappointment over the failure of all four Kenyan mobile operators to achieve an 80% QoS threshold.

"The line on the issue of regulatory obligations is very clear. You comply or you are out of business," Matiangi said.

“If you come in, you come to a regulatory environment and you play according to the rules.

"Our responsibility is to ensure that the people of Kenya receive quality service. It has nothing to do with us loving or hating them and it is as clear as that," he added.

The CCK’s quality of service report 2013-2013 shows that none of the Kenyan operators met any key performance indicators (KPIs), which include completed calls, dropped calls rate, call set up time, call set up success rate, handover success rate, speech quality and signal strength.

All operators failed in the call block rate, completed calls and call set up success rate KPIs in the assessment period.

The highest performance was recorded by Telkom Kenya, which scored 62.5%, followed by Safaricom, Airtel and Essar Telecom who all scored 50%.

Safaricom, Airtel and Essar all scored 75% in the period 2010-2011. Meanwhile, Telkom Kenya scored 87.5% in 2011-2012.

In line with this, the CCK has embarked on a bid to ensure a marked improvement in the QoS levels.

This includes non-renewal or revoking of operating licenses of telcos which have not met the set standards by the end of the next assessment period.

However, revoking licenses may prove tricky as mobile operators have started to generate large tax revenues for the Kenyan government.

Kenya’s largest mobile operator Safaricom, which has over 20 million subscribers, says it remitted Kshs 23.06 billion in duties, taxes and license fees for the six month period ended 30 September 2013.