NIGERIAN COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

DIRECTORATE OF TECHNICAL RESEARCH & STANDARDS

Quality of Service (QoS) Indicators for Mobile Services

The Quality of Service (QoS) indicators for Mobile Services given below are the
minimum QoS indicators, which every GSM mobile operator must report to the
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) at the specified frequency. Each
operator must note the following:

- The reporting frequency shall be Quarterly. The report for the preceding
quarter must arrive at the NCC (Abuja Office) at most by 15th of the first
month of each quarter.

- The report shall be in the format provided (see below) by the NCC.

- Using the format provided, each operator must provide the reports on the
following basis:

i. A National Report (covering the nation-wide network services).

ii. Regional Reports (preferably using the six geo-political zones).
iii. Urban Area Reports for Lagos, Aba, Abuja, Kano, Benin City, Maiduguri,
and Port-Harcourt cities only.

- Each operator must provide both hard copy and editable electronic (MS
Word / Excel) versions of the reports.

Note that failure to adhere to the above shall mean non-compliance and NCC shall
take appropriate measures accordingly.

QoS Indicators for Mobile Services

TECHNICAL PARAMETERS
Parameter Value Remark
s

Intra- Inter- Network Internatio

Networ PLMN PTO PSTN nal
k
Call Setup Success =90% Agreed
Rate (%)
Handover Success =90% Agreed
Rate (%)
Call Drop Rate (%) =2% Agreed

Post Dialing Delay <5sec <10s <10s <10sec <13sec Agreed

(s) ec ec

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Transmission Impairment
Value Remarks
Bit Error Rate (BER) per link =1 x 10-9 Agreed
(reading to be taken once
at commissioning)
End-to-End Error Rate =1 x 10-6 Agreed

Other Network Measures

Value Remarks
Voice Quality Impairment <2% Agreed
Answer Seizure Intra-network = 50% Agreed
Ratio (ASR) Inter-network = 45% Agreed
Call Completion Rate (CCR) % = 90% Agreed
Busy Hour BSC Traffic Channel =10% Agreed
(TCH) Congestion (%)
Minimum Data Encoding Rate Half-Rate Agreed
Minimum Speech Encoding Rate Half-Rate Agreed

Value-Added Services KPIs (SMS & MMS)

Value Remarks
SMS / MMS
% of SMS / MMS delivery failures <0.2% Agreed
(if not delivered after
storage time of ten days)
% of SMS / MMS incorrect <0.2% Agreed
feedback
% of SMS / MMS multiple billing <0.01% Agreed

COMMERCIAL INDICATORS
Customer Service KPIs
Value Remarks
Complaints
Customer complaints per 100 =5 Agreed
customers
Number of customers satisfaction =98% Agreed
index

Speed of Problem Resolution

(a) % cleared same day >90% Agreed
(b) % cleared in 2 days >95% Agreed
(c) % cleared in 3 days and 100% Agreed
above

Billing Integrity
(a) % of total bills overcharged <0.5% Agreed
(b) % of incorrect credit <0.5% Agreed
balance
(c) % of Failures for Credit <1% Agreed

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 Balance
Inquiry

Customer Care Accessibility

A: Customer Care Centers
Call Completion Rate 100% Agreed
Minutes a customer spends on the - Agreed
queue (There must be a
repeated announcement
to the customer on hold
at every two minutes
interval)

B: Customer Interface Points

Number of Interface Points - Agreed
(Should be tied to
subscriber base)
Minutes a customer spends on the = 10 Agreed
queue

Recharge Cards
% of Recharge cards loading errors <0.02% Agreed
% of Recharge cards loading <0.02% Agreed
incorrect feedback

The above benchmarks are valid until reviewed from time to time as appropriate.

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DEFINITION OF TERMS

Call Completion Rate:

The ratio of successfully completed calls to the total number of attempted calls (ITU-T
E600/2.13). That is, the ratio of the number of completed call attempts to the total
number of call attempts, at a given point of a network.

Note: This ratio is typically expressed as either a percentage or a decimal fraction. It is

the number of calls of specific duration successfully completed; measured per
100 calls.
Note: A complete call is a call that is released by normal call clearing (i.e., Released
Message “RL_M” and Released Complete Message “RLC_M” has been
successfully exchanged in the signaling flow), be it during a ringing phase or
conversation phase by either the caller or called party.

ASR (Answer Seizure Ratio):

The ratio of the number of successful calls over the total number of outgoing calls from
a carrier’s network (i.e. On a route or a Destination Point Code (DPC) basis, and during
a specified time interval, the ratio of the number of seizures that result in an answer
signal to the total number of seizures: ITU-T E600/2.14).

Note: ASR is line seizures that are answered by person or device divided by total
number of seizures.
Note: Seizure is achieved after a successful “Call setup”. It means seizing a trunk
circuit for conversation or other network services. In GSM network, it refers to
seizing a Traffic Channel (TCH) after a successful “Call setup”.
Note: A successful call is a call that is answered by a called party or machine (e.g., fax
machine, answering machine, e.t.c.).

Call Setup Success Rate:

Number of the unblocked call attempts divided by the total number of call attempts.
Or
(1 - Blocking Probability) x 100%

Note: A call setup is an exchange of signaling information in the call process that leads
to Traffic Channel (TCH) seizure.

Call Drop Rate:

The Call Drop Rate is the number of dropped calls divided by the total number of call
attempts.
Or
(1 - Call Completion Ratio) x 100%

Note: A dropped call is a call that is prematurely terminated before being released
normally by either the caller or called party (i.e., the call is dropped before the
exchange of Released Message “RL_M” and Released Complete Message
“RLC_M” in the signaling flow).

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Post Dialing Delay:
In GSM network, is the average time between pressing send button (after pressing
correct digits) and getting a ring back tone. This is also called “Call Setup Time” or
time to connect a call.

Handover Success Rate:

This is the ratio of the number of successfully completed handovers to the total
number of initiated handovers. This ratio can be expresses as a percentage.

Bit Error Rate (BER) per link:

The link Bit Error Rate (BER) refers to the average bit error rate on the MSC -PSTN link,
Inter MSC link, A-Interface and Abis-Inteface. This parameter should not deteriorate
above 10-9 .

The End-to-End Bit Error Rate:

This refers to the average end-to-end bit error rate. This parameter should not
deteriorate above 10 -6 .

Voice Quality Impairment:

Speech Quality
Speech quality is a complex psycho -acoustic phenomenon within the process of
perception. As such, it is necessarily subjective (i.e., Every person interprets speech
quality in a different way).

Nevertheless, if speech quality is to be quantified and measured automatically, the

dependence on individual opinion must be eliminated. Therefore speech quality is
generally expressed as a Mean Opinion Score (MOS). Speech quality measurements
provide a measurement basis in order to specify the requirements that network
operators have to fulfill.

Methods for evaluating speech quality are two: Subjective method and Objective. The
“Subjective method” makes use of a listener panel to assess speech quality. Speech
quality is expressed as MOS, which is average speech quality perceived by the
members of the panel.

The “Objective method” however replaced the listener panel by an algorithm to

compute MOS value from a speech samples. The Commission expect all Operators to
use the “Objective method” (where equipment available) of measurement because it is
in good agreement with “exact” speech quality, it is automatic and has easily
reproducible result .

The speech quality can be transformed by appropriate statistical methods to a scale in

Table 1 below.

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Table 1: ITU-T Scale of absolute category rating
Quality of Score Remarks
Speech
(Samples)
Excellent 5 These Samples results to
excellent speech quality
Good 4
Fair 3
Poor 2 These Samples results to poor
speech quality
Bad 1 These Samples results to noise
only (no speech is heard at the
receiver)

The table below gives the benchmarking for the speech quality adopted by the
Commission using the scale in Table 1. The Voice Quality Impairment of less than
2%, means that the total number of “Bad Speech” Samples (resulting in only noise)
throughout entire conversation must not be up to 2%. This means that the entire
conversation must result to predominantly “Excellent and Good” speech Samples.

Table 2: Benchmarks for the Voice Quality

Quality of Score Benchmarks Remarks
Speech (% of Received
(Samples) Samples)
Excellent 5 > 80%
Good 4 < 20%
Fair 3 < 5%
Poor 2 < 3%
Bad 1 < 2% The % of samples that result
in totally impaired voice
message (unrecognized)
should be < 2

Busy Hour Traffic Channel Congestion (%):

This is the percentage congestion of the TCH measured at the busy hour and is given
by:

Busy Hour TCH Traffic (Erlang) – Average TCH Traffic (Erlang) x 100
Busy Hour TCH Traffic (Erlang)

% of Failures for Credit Balance Inquiry:

This is the ratio of the number of failures of credit balance inquiry to the total number
of credit balance inquiry expressed as a percentage at some instant on the network.
This parameter is for a prepaid subscriber.

Number of failures for credit balance inquiry x 100

Total number of credit balance enquiry

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Minimum Data Rate:
This is the minimum TCH encoding rate for data (Half-Rate channel, 4.8kbps: GSM
Specification 06.20).

Minimum Speech Rate:

This is the minimum TCH encoding rate for speech (Half-Rate channel, 6.5kbps: GSM
Specification 06.20).

% of SMS-MMS Delivery Failures:

This is the ratio of SMS/MMS to the recipients undelivered to the total number of
SMS/MMS received at the Service Center within specified period of 10 days.

Number of SMS/MMS to recipients undelivered x 100

Total Number of SMS/MMS received at Service Center

% of SMS/MMS Incorrect Feedback:

This is the ratio of the number of SMS/MMS transmitted in which the sender received
wrong feedback to the total number of SMS/MMS received at the Service Center at
some instant on the network.

Number of SMS/MMS in which the senders received wrong feedback x 100

Total Number of SMS/MMS received at Service Center

% of SMS/MMS Multiple Billing:

This is the ratio of the number of SMS/MMS messages in which more than one charges
are applied per message to the total number of SMS/MMS received at the Service
Center at some instant on the network.

Number of SMS/MMS in which more than one charges are applied x 100
Total Number of SMS/MMS received at Service Center

Customer Complaints Per 100 Customers:

This parameter is the average number of service complaints received from randomly
distributed samples of 100 customers.

Number of Customers Satisfaction Index:

This is the percentage of the number of customers satisfied with the services of an
operator in randomly distributed samples of customers.

Speed of Problem Resolution:

a) % cleared same day:
This is the percentage of the number of problems resolved on the day
they were received.
Number resolved problems in day one x 100
Total number of problems received on that day

b) % cleared in two days:

This is the percentage of the number problems resolved within the second
day they were received.

Number of resolved problems in day one and two x 100

Total number of problems received in day one
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 c) % cleared in 3 days and above:
This is the percentage of the number of problems resolved within three
days and above to the day they were received.

Number of resolved problems in day 1, 2 and 3 and above x 100

Total number of problems received in day one

Billing Integrity:
a) % of total bills overcharged:
This parameter is the percentage of the number of Post-Paid accounts
that are overcharged within a particular month.

b) % of incorrect credit balance:

This parameter is the percentage of number of Pre-Paid accounts that
suffer incorrect credit balance within a particular month.

c) % of Failures for Credit Balance Inquiry:

This is the ratio of the number of failures of credit balance inquiry to the
total number of credit balance inquiry expressed as a percentage at
some instant on the network. This parameter is for a prepaid subscriber.

Customer Care Accessibility:

a) 100% Call Completion Rate:
This means that all calls to the center must be answered by a customer
care personnel or a machine to put a customer on hold for sometime (the
line must never be busy at any time). Alternatively, all calls to the center
must go through.

b) Minutes a customer spends on the queue:

This is the average time in minutes a customer is expected to spend on
customer care center queue.

Customer Interface Points:

a) Number of Interface points:
This is an office where a customer can go to lodge complaints. This is in
addition to customer care centers.

b) Minutes a customer spends on the queue:

This is the average time in minutes a customer is expected to spend on
customer interface point queue before being attended to by a staff.

Recharge Cards:
a) % of Recharge Cards Loading Errors:
This is the ratio of the number of times Recharge Card loading failed to
the total number of loading attempts at some instant on the network
expressed as a percentage.

Number of unsuccessful Recharge Card loading attempts x 100

Total Number of loading attempts

b) % of Recharge Cards loading incorrect feedback:

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 This is the ratio of the number of times an incorrect feedback is received
during Calling Card / vo ucher loading to the total number of loading
attempts expressed as a percentage.

Number of incorrect feedback received during voucher loading x 100

Total Number of loading attempts

When to take measurement:

The measurement of network KPIs is expected to be taken during your network busy
hour. You may choose any hour within the peak periods of the day, provided such
chosen busy hour is reported to the Commission.

Method of Measurement:
The network parameters are expected to be generated from the OMC report. Where
such counters are not available you may use any available means provided the method
is reported to the Commission. Most of the parameters including Voice Quality
Impairment and Post Dialing Delay could easily be measured using Drive Test
Equipment (if such equipment is available). The link BER could be measured using
BERT Tester or any other available means. For the credit balance and recharge errors
you may use your Prepaid System Administration (PPAS) where possible or any other
available method. For the commercial indicators you can use subjective method to
compute the Mean Opinion Score (MOS).

Submission of the Report:

The report is to be submitted to the Commission in hard and editable soft copy
(Word/Excel) format every quarter. The report should reach the Commission by 15 th of
the first month of each quarter.