NCC Declares Starcomms, 12 Other Telcos Inactive

Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms industry regulator has declared 13 telecoms operators that were hitherto vibrant, as inactive.

The list of inactive operators, which was posted on NCC's website, include one national carrier, one GSM operator, five Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators and six Fixed/Fixed Wireless operators.

The operators include NITEL, MTel, Starcomms, Reliance Telecoms (Zoom Mobile), Intercellular, MTS First Communications, WiTel, O' Net (Odua Telecoms), Rainbownet, Monarch Communications, Xs Broadband, Webcom, and Disc Communications.

The operators became inactive, following the total loss of their customers to other operators that are currently pulling weight in the industry.

They had since gone into extinction and could no longer offer competitive services to their customers, who decided to port to other network operators.

Porting was however not linked to the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) scheme that was introduced in April last year, as the 13 operators had long shown signs of distress in their operations. MNP allows subscribers the opportunity to port their numbers from one network to another, in search of better service quality.

NCC decided to declare the operators inactive to enable it study and circulate the accurate figures of telecoms operations in the country.