Govt asks PUC to tighten regulations because of “numerous reports” of poor Internet quality

Last Updated on Wednesday, 6 April 2022, 17:49 by Denis Chabrol

Prime Minister Mark Phillips

Citing several complaints about the quality of Internet service, Prime Minister Mark Phillips on Wednesday asked the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to set Quality of Service benchmarks for providers to abide by.

In a letter to PUC Chairman, Attorney-at-Law Della Britton, Prime Minister Mark Phillips asked that steps be taken to amend the Telecommunications (Consumer) Protection Regulations 2020 “at a minimum” Quality of Service Parameters for availability, packet loss ratio (upload and download), average throughout for packet data, latency and jitter.

He said that he would soon check back with the PUC about the required procedures to put those parameters in place due with the aim of addressing concerns by subscribers. “The Government of Guyana is extremely concerned at numerous reports of poor quality of public telecommunication services, especially with respect to fixed and mobile broadband Internet services. I am advised that the institution of appropriate technical Quality of Service Standards is a necessary part of the solution to this issue,” the Prime Minister, who holds ministerial responsibility for the telecommunication sector, told the PUC Chairman.

The problems that he hopes the Quality of Service Standards will be able to resolve are service outage such as inability to place calls or dropped calls at the start of an outage, dropped connections such as waiting for retransmission, dropped calls and buffering, delay between the person speaking and the other party hearing, and jerky, freezing and stop-and-start of videos.