Official Spokesperson for the Communications Commission: All Complaints Have Been Processed

The official spokesperson for the Communications and Information Technology Commission, Adel Abu Haimed, confirmed that the Commission received 77,248 complaints in 2016, and that all of these complaints were processed in accordance with the Telecommunications Act and its implementing regulations. He added that 96% of these complaints were processed by the Commission, with regulatory action taken on the remaining 4% of those complaints.

Abu Haimed clarified the inaccuracy of what has been circulating in some media outlets regarding the Commission processing only 1% of the complaints it received in 2016, affirming that what was stated in the Commission's 2016 annual report regarding the issuance of (919) decisions by the Committee for Considering Violations of the Telecommunications Act is meant to clarify the number of decisions issued by the Committee covering all violations referred to it, and that there is no correlation between the number of decisions issued by the Committee and the Commission's complaint-processing rate.

It should be noted that the Communications and Information Technology Commission continues to work on protecting users' rights, having recently restructured its organization and established a new sector concerned with user and partner affairs, in addition to launching an index ranking telecommunications service providers based on complaints escalated to the Commission, amending some articles of the implementing regulations of the Telecommunications Act regarding complaint handling and billing, issuing the document “Terms for Providing Telecommunications and Information Technology Services and the Rights and Obligations of Users and Service Providers,” and launching inspection campaigns to verify service providers' compliance in applying it.