The Communication Authority of Kenya (CA) Director General David Mugonyi was on Tuesday grilled by Members of Parliament (MPs) drawn from the Information Communication Technology (ICT) Committee over the expiry of data bundles and the accountability of Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
In the committee meeting chaired by Dagoretti South MP John Kiarie, the MPs raised concerns about the lack of measures to protect consumers from data bundle expiries and internet service disruptions.
They also decried a lack of compensation after the expiry of unused bundles and the clear absence of systems allowing consumers to express their complaints.
“If radio stations can air quality of service issues, why aren’t ISPs doing the same for internet service? Other countries have implemented no-expiry policies, and we need similar protections here,” MP Kiarie stated.
Other committee members also echoed these concerns and recommended treating data bundle payments as a utility payable monthly or regularly instead of having data bundle packages that expire within hours.
“Why do we pay for bundles that expire before we use them? If bundles worked like other utilities, consumers wouldn’t be losing their money,” Kisii County Women Representative Doris Donya quipped.
As for Tetu MP Geoffrey Wandeto, he felt that the short-term data packages were a clear fraud, noting that it was unrealistic for anyone to consume 20GB of data bundles within an hour of purchase.
When it came to his response, Kiarie informed the committee that efforts to penalise the internet providers in the past had not done enough to address the gap in the current laws concerning the mandatory compensation for consumers who do not deplete their data purchases before expiry.
On the issue of not having clear systems for complaints to ISPs, he explained that a campaign had been initiated by the authority to spread awareness and education to the public on how to lodge complaints.
Ultimately, the Director General was directed to enact tougher oversight mechanisms to ensure that all ISPs operating in the country put the customer first by putting in measures like providing compensations following service outages.
This is not the first time MPs have taken this issue on data expiry to the house. In 2022, the National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wa brought up the issue in Parliament noting that he was concerned about Kenyans losing money when bundles expired before they were depleted.
“It is indeed true that the internet is very expensive in Kenya because of the mode of purchase. The moment you buy weekly bundles and fail to use the package, they expire, and you end up losing money,” Kimani stated in his address on November 24, 2022.
He also suggested that ISPs bill data bundles as a utility saying, “Internet should be billed like electricity where you pay only what you have consumed.”
