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Subscribers blame telcos, NCC for sharp practices

By BusinessNews Staff on July 22, 2014

Telecoms subscribers in different parts of the country have expressed disgust at what they call illegal deductions being made by the telecommunications companies for the services being rendered by the firms.

Some of the subscribers told our correspondent that some latent but punitive measures allegedly being perpetrated by the Global System of Mobile telecommunication service providers against them were suffocating them.

They said they could no longer cope with such practices and would go the extra mile of venting their anger since the Nigerian Communications Commission seemed to be encouraging it.

One of the abnormal income generation strategies by the telecommunication operators, according to those who voiced their grievances, is through the short message service.

Often, subscribers are sent SMS (text messages) calling for answers to one puzzle or another at a fee. At other times, the SMS can be a promotion of one application, service or tips about health conditions.

“There may be nothing bad with the solicitation for patronage or advertising a product. But the silent injury done to GSM subscribers is that in situations where one wants to stop the unsolicited SMS, one is told that the SMS intended to enforce the stoppage is billed,” a resident of Owerri, the Imo State capital, Mr. Tope Olugbemi, said.

Olugbemi, who is a journalist, wondered how such a chain of communication would attract a penalty when it was not mutually entered into or initiated by the subscribers.

He said if a subscriber had to pay as much as N4 to stop distressing SMS initiated by the service provider, how much then did the service provider pay to the subscriber for providing the platform through credits in the first place.

Olugbemi said, “The ready meanings one can draw from the ongoing reap off of Nigerian GSM users is that subscribers are cornered and like a cow in a harness, milked dry of their hard earned money.

“Little wonder that at the end of every fiscal year, the GSM operators post stupendous amounts in profit. Yet the question remains, what is the Nigerian Communications Commission doing to curtail these unfair trade practices and income generation methods?”

The National Publicity Secretary, Conference of Nigerian Political Parties, Mr. Osita Okechukwu, said what was not yet clear was the NCC’s involvement in the unfair trade practices going on among the telecoms operators.

He said the regulating body had rebuffed several efforts that had been made by him and other subscribers to correct the operators.

Okechukwu particularly blamed one of the major operators in the country, saying, “This particular telecommunications company is the biggest culprit, yet the NCC has refused to touch it.

“With the body language of the NCC, it is now obvious that the so called sanction of three of the telecommunications companies sometime ago was a fluke. Otherwise, why hasn’t the quality of service improved, nor has the SMS scandal stopped?

Okechukwu said such unsolicited text messages should be stopped with immediate effect and the rate for text messages should be crashed, even as he noted that in certain instances, undelivered SMS were being billed against the subscribers.

“What we pay for text messages here is so much compared to what is obtainable in other climes, yet the telecoms operators sometimes deduct twice or thrice the money. The cost of SMS is very expensive, simple,” he added.

A house guard in Ojudu area of Lagos State, Mr. Adamu Mohammed, shared Okechukwu’s views and stated that non-literate people like him were the major victims of the abnormal income generation practices by the operators.

However, the Head, Media and Public Relations, NCC, Mr. Reuben Muoka, faulted the claims by the subscribers, saying they were not realistic.

He said that for more than 11 years, SMS charges had hovered between N9 and N15 until the NCC introduced a new regulation for SMS and the cost came down to N4.

“Yet, people want it free after our efforts; if that is the case, then they must sit up and be realistic that this is not a military regime,” Muoka added.

He said, “SMS is just N4 per page; if you type more than a page, then you will be charged twice; so, people should not misconstrue it to mean that they are being charged twice or thrice for SMS.

“Should a subscriber now call another operator, who will pay for it at the end of the day? All over the world, I have not seen where SMS is free. When you check its equivalent cost internationally, it is the same N4.”

On value added services such as unsolicited text messages, Muoka said it was a matter of choice to subscribe, adding, “Let those complaining call the operator and say they don’t want it.”

“Have they called the NCC to say they don’t want it and the operators are forcing them to use it? Moreover, it is not as if every complaint will be resolved in one day,” the NCC spokesperson said.

He added that the regulator had done its best to checkmate the irregularities in the industry, saying, “We have a programme, the Telecom Today, through which we put the operators on phone to talk about caller tunes and unsubscribed messages, among others, and that has helped to check the perceived excesses of the operators.

“You must understand that whatever the operators are doing today are only money-generating strategies; so, the subscribers have an option to either accept or reject them.

“The operators have different ways of making money; so, if you don’t subscribe to those competitions they bring to you, they won’t charge you. Sometimes, when people claim they are charged, they are not. Seventy-five per cent of such claims are not true. When they are true, the operators are forced to return the money.”

On the operators’ part, the General Manager, Corporate Affairs Division, MTN Nigeria, Ms. Funmi Onajide, said most of the spam mails coming to subscribers did not originate from the operators.

She said there was a “grey” industry for the generation of unsolicited spam SMSs for marketing purposes by various unknown entities.

The MTN spokesperson also said there were abundance of technologies and applications that allowed the spread and termination of the SMSs on the operators’ networks through the Internet.

Onajide said, “Operators have very limited control over this and it has become a real concern as we do not make revenue from those kinds of messages, and this dumping affects the integrity of the networks.

“Operators can do limited filtering but care must be taken not to also block out genuine and valuable messages that have been requested by customers.”

She said customers unknowingly make themselves vulnerable to their data being used illegally by giving making it available for uncertain purposes.

“However, there is a regulated third party Value Added Service, market which is carefully regulated by the NCC and the operators, and there are defined rules around the use of bulk SMSs” she added.

[Punch]

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