Airtel Zambia Plc has been directed to compensate its customers with approximately four million Zambian kwacha following a widespread data services outage that disrupted connectivity across several provinces on Sunday, February 2, 2025.
The directive was issued by the Zambia Information and Communications Technology Authority (ZICTA), the nation’s telecommunications regulator, in response to the three-hour service disruption that affected subscribers in Lusaka, Southern, Western, Central, and Eastern provinces.
Hanford Chaaba, ZICTA’s Corporate Affairs Manager, confirmed the compensation order in a statement released on Tuesday. “The outage significantly inconvenienced consumers, and Airtel has been instructed to compensate all affected customers accordingly,” Mr. Chaaba said.
The regulator has also mandated Airtel Zambia to implement robust mechanisms to prevent future network failures and ensure strict compliance with consumer protection guidelines. Mr. Chaaba noted that ZICTA remains concerned about the recurring nature of service disruptions on Airtel’s network.
“We expect Airtel to address the root causes of these outages and improve the resilience of their infrastructure to maintain service reliability,” he added.
Airtel Zambia, one of the country’s leading mobile service providers, has faced mounting criticism from customers over the consistency of its network services. As digital connectivity becomes increasingly vital for business operations, education, and personal communication, the impact of such outages has drawn heightened scrutiny from both regulators and the public.
Airtel Zambia has not yet issued an official statement regarding the directive or outlined how the compensation will be disbursed to affected consumers.
They should ask Airtel to build a Primary School or a Level One hospital with that money instead of sharing among the drunkard citizens.