Zambia's government has warned that it will deal firmly with the country’s mobile phone service providers that are giving Zambians poor services.

The Zambian government has further warned that mobile operators that were cheating consumers and abusing their rights will not be allowed to continue operating in the country.

Out-going minister of Commerce, Trade and Industry Emmanuel Chenda said it was unfair for consumers to subscribe to mobile service providers in order to communicate and to access information, yet receive inconsistent and poor services with dropouts in service.

He also said it was not fair for mobile phone service providers to cheat consumers, either because of unfair contract terms and conditions or because they did not understand what they had agreed at the begging of the affiliation.

“It is for this reason that consumers must demand fairness and transparency in the billing system and also protection from billing fraud,” Chenda said.

He added that the Zambian government was committed to protecting ordinary consumers from exploitation and abuse by mobile phone service operators.

The country’s three mobile phone operate MTN, Airtel and Zamtel have all been dragged to court by the Zambia Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA), the country’s telecom sector regulator over poor quality of service.

ZICTA said exploiting customers amounts to fraud, which is criminal in nature hence the decision to drag the operators to court for prosecution.

Complaints of dropped calls, network congestion, network outage, poor customer service, lack of confidentiality and a widespread lack of network availability have flooded the likes of Zambia Consumer Association, according to Muyunda Ililonga who the executive director of the consumer body.