Nigerian CommunicationWeek

NCC May Sanction Telcos for Flouting Ban on SIM Card Sell

Omobola Johnson, Minister of Communications Technology

The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has warned is will not spare more any telecom operator flouting its directive to suspend SIM card sells, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can report.

NCC had upon imposing a N647.5million sanction on three major network service providers, Airtel, Globacom and MTN Nigeria Limited for failing to meet the key performance indicators (KPIs) for quality of service in the month of January 2014, directed that they suspend SIM card sells.

Speaking on the allegation that the operators might have continued the normal SIM card business, Dr. Okechukwu Itanyi, executive commissioner, Stakeholders Management at NCC, told journalist in Lagos at the Cyber Forum 2014, that the Commission’s resolve to impose fines on the telcos was a means putting them on notice about the dissatified nature of the quality of service.

He disclosed that the ban handed over to the operators within the month of March 2014 has not been put-off hence they are yet to meet the expected KPIs.

Itanyi said: “Basically, the fines are to put the operators on notice that we are not happy with the standards of service they are giving to Nigerians. We have key performance indicators and whenever they fall short of expectation we have to sanction them.

“One of the ways of the sanctions is by putting fines. It’s not the best way to sanction, but a way to put them on notice.

“We are also talking with the operators to find ways to improve on the infrastructures that they have, because part of the problems is that their networks cannot carry the traffic they generate”.

When asked about operators flouting the directive to suspend SIM card sells, the EC said, “We stopped MTN, Globacom & Airtel from selling SIM cards.

“The enforcement was for a month. Well, if they are selling, it is something that they doing in negligence to our instruction. It’s something they we sanction any of them for. It was for a month, we extended it and have not lifted it”.

Apart from banning the operstors from selling SIM carsa, the Commission had barred them also from any form of promotions in their networks until they improve on the failed indicators which include call setup success rate, drop call rate and signaling congestion.

During the imposition of the sanction Mr. Tony Ojobo, director, Corporate Affairs at NCC, said that the Commission was lately compelled to impose sanctions of over N600 million on three network operators following their failure to meet key performance indicators resulting to declining quality of service and a shortchange of consumers.

Mr Ojobo explained that these sanctions are right on the heels of a previous sanction on the network operators in 2012 and a directive by the NCC for a progressive improvement with a deadline of 31st of December 2013 for key performance indicators to be met failure to which stringent measures will follow.

He added that an audit of the defaulting companies will be carried out in March.

Ojobo also stated that the compliance monitoring and enforcement department of the commission is monitoring the networks to ensure strict compliance warning that any deviation or alteration of provisioning pattern in the period before the sanctions are enforced will be considered a breach of the  Commission’s directive.

Meanwhile, the Nigerian telecommunications market has been adjudged one of the fastest growing markets in Africa with almost 120 million mobile phones users but the services of the telecoms company have dwindled in recent times.

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