The Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA) has complained to the country's three mobile phone service providers of continued poor service delivery, despite repeated warnings.

The regulator said it has written to MTN, Airtel and Zamtel informing them that they have to immediately address issues of quality of service delivery to members of the public.

ZICTA consumer protection officer Edgar Mlauzi said the authority has held meetings with operators to assist them in improving service delivery.

He added that the regulator is considering blocking operator driven market promotions because it claims these promotions impact on the quality of service.

According to Mlauzi ZICTA has received quarterly reports from the three mobile operators and used these to draw comparisons on their performance, in line with the authority's set guidelines of service delivery.

ZICTA has begun reviewing its quality of service guidelines in order to strengthen them and impose heavy penalties for failure of operators to meet requirements.

"We will soon release a report to inform the nation after we have finalised our discussions with the operators and analyse the reports we have compiled," Mlauzi said.

The authority claims to have received many complaints from users about operator service levels.

According to the licence conditions, if 5% of customers from a particular network experience network outages or poor service, ZICTA will immediately carry out investigations.

In 2013 the regulator took legal action against the operators and described their behaviour as 'criminal in nature' because customers were made to pay for dropped calls, congested networks and undelivered text messages.

Attempts to contact mobile operators for comment proved unsuccessful at the time of publishing.