Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has directed operators in the telecommunication industry to begin data rollover from June 26.
This means telecom operators must henceforth add a subscriber’s unused or unfinished data to his/her new or next data subscription.
Before this new directive from the NCC, subscribers’ unfinished or unused data subscription automatically became useless to as soon as it hit the expiry date.
However, yesterday, Prof Garba Umar Danbatta, NCC’s executive vice chairman, said telecom operators must begin the implementation of the data rollover directive from June 26, 2018.
Prof. Danbatta gave the marching order at the 95th Consumers Outreach Programme in Dutse, Jigawa State.
The NCC boss who was represented by the Head of Information and Reference Unit of the commission, Alhaji Ismail Adedigba, said failure by the operators to start implementing the directive would attract N5m fine on each subscriber which they failed to roll over.
“The NCC has directed the telecom service providers in the country to begin the implementation of data rollover on June 26, 2018. They have been duly informed about this and they have also been given adequate time to prepare their networks for it.
“Failure to implement this will attract N5m fine on the first of failure on each SIM card and N500,000 on each day that follows the first default date.
“All these are to ensure that the consumers’ rights, privileges and interests are adequately protected,” he said.
Abubakar Badaru, governor of Jigawa State, said the NCC should work on closing the access gaps in the state.
Represented at the occasion by Barrister Ibrahim Hassan Hadeija, his deputy, he said the NCC and the operators should do more to make e-learning popular among students by crashing the prices of data subscription.
The Commission has also given operators mid-July, 2018 for the operators in the telecommunication industry to commence payment of N165bn interconnect debt.
Danbatta, disclosed this yesterday when the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) paid him a courtesy visit in Abuja.
Interconnect debt results when an operator fails to settle the cost of termination of service rendered to it by another operator in the industry.
“Deadline has been given, mid-July, for the payment plan to commence. Debtors should start paying and those who are being owed should start receiving.”
Mr Olusola Teniola, president of ATCON, expressed concern over multiple taxation levied on telecoms operators in Nigeria, saying it serves as a disincentive to rollout broadband services to the 192 market gaps. “We need the taxes to be removed to encourage investments,” he said.