The relation between quality of service and quality of experience

25.08.2020

Factors influencing the quality of experience Quality of experience (QoE) is now taken to be “the degree of delight or annoyance of the user of an application or service,” following ITU-T Recommendation P.10/G.100 (ITU-T 2017). Conventionally it is regarded as being determined by “influencing factors” of the following kinds, which are discussed in more detail in Qualinet White Paper (Qualinet 2013): Human-related influencing factors: properties of users, such as gender, age, education, background, expertise, feeling, expectation, hearing, and sight. System-related influencing factors: properties of ICT used, such as power consumption, usability of input and output devices, accuracy of encoding and…

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The ECTEL experience of quality of service regulation

25.08.2020

Introduction The Eastern Caribbean Telecommunications Authority (ECTEL) develops model laws and regulations for five countries: Dominica, Grenada, Saint Christopher and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The models are transposed into national acts and regulations according to national priorities. ECTEL consulted on its draft quality of service regulations, first in 2005 and then in 2006, before adopting them in 2007. Four of the ECTEL countries then transposed the regulations into their national frameworks: Dominica in 2008, Grenada in 2009, Saint Christopher and Nevis in 2008, and Saint Lucia in 2007. ECTEL proposed revisions to the regulations in…

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The Anatel (Brazil) approach to quality of service monitoring for mobile services

24.08.2020

Basis The regulator monitors the quality of mobile telephony in six parameters. This number has been reduced, most recently from fourteen in 2019. Small operators, which are defined as ones with a national market share of less than 5 per cent in each of their retail markets, are exempt from quality of service monitoring. For each parameter there is a target. The extent to which targets are reached has been rising: it was 79.7 per cent in 2015, 80.9 per cent in 2016, 81.1 per cent in 2017, 83.4 per cent in 2018 and 84.3 per cent in 2019. The…

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Reference sources and further reading

20.08.2020

Reference sources Several websites offer much relevant content for regulators, including but not restricted to material related to consumer affairs. Those listed below both supplement the Digital Regulation Handbook and Platform and will keep readers updated on future developments. https://digitalindex.consumersinternational.org/ Consumer International’s ”collection of digital policies and initiatives from different countries that aim to protect and empower consumers in the digital world.” https://www.consumersinternational.org/news-resources/publications/page/1 Latest publications from Consumers International. The list contained several substantial reports on consumer research and policy, largely related to the digital world. https://www.internetjurisdiction.net/publications/retrospect#eyJ0byI6IjIwMjAtMDMifQ== Internet and Jurisdiction Policy Network Retrospect Database, goes back to 2012, searchable by topic…

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Social media platform regulation

20.08.2020

The moderation of online content, especially on social media platforms, is a pressing issue for consumers and citizens. Experience of the Facebook Oversight Board, a self-regulatory initiative, will affect the future not only of Facebook, but also of other regulatory initiatives relating to social media and platforms more generally (including self-regulatory[1] and coregulatory initiatives. Within any one platform, there may be tensions between simple commercial considerations and political/public relations imperatives. To these may be added actual legal constraints, such as already exist in Germany[2] and are proposed in the United Kingdom,[3] to combat online harms. A valuable overview of the…

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Dispute resolution and redress

20.08.2020

Existing arrangements Source: Antelope Consulting. Ensuring that consumers’ complaints about providers are dealt with in a fair way is an important continuing duty for most ICT regulators. This is why a 2019 ITU Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) Discussion Paper focused on dispute resolution and redress. It identified different types of dispute handling mechanism, as shown in the box below. Consumer dispute handling mechanisms In-house complaints procedures: conducted by the provider of the services or product. Mediation: conducted confidentially by an independent third party working towards a negotiated agreement of a dispute. Conciliation: a third party takes a more active…

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Good practices in consumer outreach and education

20.08.2020

Regulators’ roadshows Source: TRAI consumer outreach newsletter, February 2020. Many regulators recognize that even with the increasing availability of digital media, physical visits to different parts of their territory remain of great value in establishing human connections with ordinary consumers. The photo above is taken from an outreach event held by the Indian regulator, TRAI, in Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan in January 2020. It shows that such events can attract impressive audiences. TRAI had ten such outreach events planned to take place during February 2020. Source: ICASA image gallery. The South African regulator ICASA also has a roadshow programme. Of course, roadshows…

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Consumer requirements of regulators

19.08.2020

Introduction Source: UK National Consumer Federation. In the United Kingdom in 2018, the U.K. National Consumer Federation (2018) published the Consumer Charter for Regulators which is reproduced below. It summarizes a set of key points, which can be useful for high-level self-assessment, or more broadly for identifying areas for change within a country. The document was produced by three major consumer organizations in the United Kingdom – Consumer Focus, Which?, and the National Consumer Federation – in consultation with many smaller consumer organizations and interested individual consumers. A consumer congress dedicated to the topic was an important stage in developing…

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Protection of consumers with prepaid accounts

26.06.2020

Regulating to protect consumers with prepaid accounts The ability to pay for mobile service in small increments,[1] as and when they are needed and resources permit, is a major factor in making the service affordable to people on low or unpredictable incomes. Affordability remains a barrier to Internet usage for large groups in Africa, South Asia, and Latin America (After Access 2017: 26, 37, 59). Despite a drift away from prepaid packages towards postpaid contracts (generally fostered by service providers, especially in richer countries), prepayment remains the dominant payment mechanism for mobile service throughout the developing world, and is still…

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Basic statistics for quality of service assessment

06.06.2020

Means Quality of service measurements are typically concerned with numbers like: The proportion of call set-ups that are successful. The mean of the times taken by file downloads. To provide the numbers, “events” (such as call set-ups and file downloads) are observed. The “observations” are numerical values of important facts about the events. For instance, in these examples they could be: 1 for a successful call set-up and 0 for an unsuccessful call set-up. The time taken by a file download. In this note observations are also called “measurements” and are used to calculate “measurement results.” Perhaps the commonest measurement…

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