Telecommunication companies will be fined for prolonged fallout time and connection in the new financial year.

Communications Minister, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum in his 2018/2019 National Budget address said this initiative will serve as a further incentive to ensure promised network coverage is maintained.

He adds it will also give consumers the opportunity to access the services they are paying for.

Digicel Fiji, chief executive, Mike Greig says the telecommunications Company supports this move by the government as its taking the lead role in advocating for the consumers.

Greig says this initiative is a further boost for Digicel to strive to provide the best to its customers.

“We have our own key performance initiative, we have our own standards that we set ourselves and as a CEO I am judged by those, my staff are judged by those. So we take service and service performance very seriously. So I applaud the government in advocating for the consumers also that’s something we take very seriously and we advocate for as well internally and we obviously want to do the very best we can to make sure our services stand up.”

According to the Telecommunications Act 2008, it prescribes fines not exceeding $1 million for telecommunications service disruptions or outages.

The new legislation also proposes a framework for compensation to be awarded by service providers to consumers for service disruptions or outages.