Telecoms companies face sanctions for operating below industry standards

With the growing poor services by telecoms providers in Nigeria, the Ministry of Communication Technology and the Consumer Protection Council, CPC, had yesterday threatened to suspend the licence of any telecom provider that continues to perform below the industry’s standard. Charging telecoms providers to work harder to improve their service delivery, the two regulatory bodies said failure would lead to the payment of fine, withdrawal of licences and jail terms of five years.

Relatively, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, had notified MTN, GLO, Airtel, Etisalat, Swift Networks, Intercellular, Multi-Links and Visafone of an impending sanction for any of them that has fallen below specified Key Performance Indicator, KPI, on quality of service.

The Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, at a joint press briefing in Lagos, said: “NCC has announced, and I repeat here, from December 31 any network operator that does not meet previously agreed targets on quality of service, QOS, indicators will be immediately prevented from further expansion of their subscriber base until further notice.

“In other words, they will not be allowed to sell SIM cards to new subscribers until quality of service targets are met.”

Johson said, the Ministry was not oblivious of the problems the operators have regarding cost of right of ways, damage to fibre optics and base stations due to vandalisms, terrorism and flood, as well as multiple taxation. She however stressed that such problems were not enough reasons to justify the continuous exploitation of consumers.

“To tackle quality of service issues in the industry, the Ministry in partnership with the Ministry of Works developed new Right of Way, ROW, guidelines for Federal Government roads to enable operators have unencumbered means of laying fibre optics, which is critical for infrastructure development and quality of service.

“To remove arbitrary charges and eradicate multiple taxations that impede telecoms development across the nation, we got state governors and relevant authorities at the state and federal levels to address the issue of multiple taxations and adopt measures that will remove arbitrary charges and eradicate multiple taxations to enhance service delivery across the nation.

“At a closed-door meeting with Governor Fashola last week, the Ministry facilitated a landmark agreement to remove constraints to the installation, roll-out and deployment of base stations and fibre optic cable in the state.”