Poor services: Telecoms operators face penalty in January

Telecoms operators in the country risk serious penalty from the Nigerian Communications Commission in January 2013 over poor quality of service.

The Executive Vice-Chairman, NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, said the commission would carry out a Quality of Service test, later this month, on all the mobile networks in line with the Key Performance Indicators it had developed for them.

Any telecoms operator found wanting after the evaluation, Juwah said, would be sanctioned.

He said, “The Commission will be carrying out QoS test on all the networks later in the month and any operator, which do not meet the required standard will be sanctioned.”

He spoke at the Telecoms Executives and Regulator Forum 2012 organised by the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria.

Industry analysts, who rated the telcos low in quality of service based on feedbacks from the country’s over 100 million subscribers, argued that no operator was likely to be spared from the impending penalty.

They urged the operators to do whatever was possible to improve on their networks.

It will be recalled that the NCC had earlier this year fined MTN, Glo, Airtel and Etisalat to the tune of N1.17bn for offering poor services on their networks.

The companies, which paid the fine, remained largely disgruntled about the development, saying operational challenges outside their control were not considered before the NCC slammed the fine on them.

Juwah, however, said though poor quality of service remained a major challenge in the telecoms industry; the sector had performed far better than the power sector.

According to him, though people are always quick to criticise telecoms operators for poor service quality, the telecoms industry has performed far better than the power sector.

“The telecoms industry has performed better than the power industry. There are times that I stay without electricity for two weeks in my house at Lekki, but people make calls everyday. Though you may call the number twice before it goes through, telecoms services are still better than power services,” Juwah said.

The EVC promised that quality of service would soon get better in the country.

Juwah also blamed mobile operators for the delay in the implementation of Mobile Number Portability, which was earlier scheduled for December 2012.

Mobile Number Portability allows subscribers to change from one network to another without losing their numbers.

Though the NCC had since 2010, been faltering on implementing the MNP in the country, Juwah said operators were largely responsible for the delay.

He said, “MNP delay is not attributed to the NCC because the NCC is pushing it more than the operators. Each of the operators is failing in one area or the other. The operators are slowing the pace.

“They are not giving MNP the priority that it deserves. The major issue is that they have yet to upgrade their billing infrastructure.”

He said the MNP would take off in the first quarter of 2013, adding that this would happen after a three-month infrastructure testing.

He said, “Following the approval of the Mobile Number Portability framework, the commission began plans to develop the regulatory, legal and technical framework for the implementation of MNP in Nigeria.