#National News

PURA inspects telecoms infrastructure for regulatory compliance

May 10, 2022, 12:01 PM | Article By: Fatou Dem

In a bid to ensure compliance with regulatory standards, the staff of The Gambia Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) recently embarked on a countrywide trek to get firsthand information on telecoms network coverage and to inspect telecommunications installations (mast and towers) across the country.  

The nationwide outreach, which commenced from March to April 2022, accorded the team the opportunity to establish firsthand information on the availability of certain recommended standards such as reflective painting, telecom tower red safety light, grounding and lightning protection for all towers and masts.  

Consequently,  the visit also afforded the Authority the opportunity to assess the quality of utility services such as internet download speed, GSM signal quality, network coverage, call drop rate and call set-up success rate by an operator per technologies (2G, 3G and 4G LTE).   

 Subsequently, the Authority will analyse the outcome and prepare a report to be shared with the operators with recommendations geared towards improving the quality of network services delivered to the public. This Quality of Service (QoS) will be continuously monitored using the just enhanced QoS monitoring system to ensure implementation of the recommendations made.

Also, the new equipment that was recently procured by the Authority was put to use and showed a real impact.

The Authority would continue such activities regularly to ensure better services for the population and to find lasting solutions to some of the challenges facing the telecom users no matter how remotely located.