Nairobi, Jan. 13 -- Telecommunications firms in Kenya, including Safaricom, Airtel, and Telkom Kenya, face higher penalties if a proposal by the industry regulator to raise the service quality threshold to 90 percent and introduce county-level assessments is approved.

The Communications Authority of Kenya (CA) is reviewing the mobile network operators' quality of service framework, which is used to gauge compliance, to set a higher service quality threshold compared to the present 80 percent.

The proposed new framework, currently undergoing public participation, also increases the frequency of assessment from once a year to quarterly, exposing the telecoms operators to higher penalties for non-compliance. The operators would be te...