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NCC shuts four telecoms firms

By on December 12, 2014

Four telecommunications companies were on Wednesday closed down by the Nigerian Communications Commission for engaging in illegal operations.

The Compliance and Enforcement team of the NCC, led by an Assistant Director, Mr. Salisu Abdu, carried out the operation.

The four telecoms operators, all located in Lagos, are Steam Communications, Netcom, SwiftTalk and Multi-dimesnion Technologies.

The commission said the team was also hunting for three more illegal operators. “We are of high expectation that the identity of these three illegal operators would have been discovered by Friday (tomorrow) when the NCC enforcement team would round off the exercise,” Abdu said.

He said all seven operators were believed to be operating on the 5.4-gigahertz frequency band, without licences by the commission.

According to him, the operations of the telecoms firms are an offence under Section 122 of the Nigerian Communication Act 2003, which criminalises any operation without proper licensing by the NCC.

The NCC assistant director said that in 2009, NCC came up with a guideline on the deployment of service on the 5.4Ghz band, which stipulated that no operator should operate on it without obtaining necessary licences from the NCC.

“In the course of the guideline, we have monitored compliance and we have discovered that we still had some operators operating illegally on the 5.4GHz till 2012. We have done a lot of clean up and we thought the frequency was free of interferences.

“So, after recent monitoring by the Spectrum Administration Department of the NCC, about seven operators are now discovered to be operating on the 5.4Ghz band.

He said, “We have removed the power units, which the three tenant companies are using to power their service. We have asked them to remove the actual radio equipment from the mast which they are handing over to the commission and an investigation will be carried out accordingly.

“By Friday (tomorrow), the enforcement team hopes to have tracked down the other three illegal operators on the 5.4GHz,” he added.

 

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