No Dormant Operator in Telecom Industry—NCC

Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has said that there are no dormant operators in the country’s telecommunications sector especially in the voice space, Nigeria CommunicationsWeek can now reveal.
This clarification is coming against the backdrop of speculations that the commission may revoke licenses of those operators especially Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators which are not doing much in terms of subscriber base.
Mr. Rueben Mouka, head, public relation, NCC, said that it is only the commission that has the right to determine if any operator is dormant or not. He explained that dormancy in telecommunications service delivery means that an operator is unable to meet its obligations such as payment of interconnect rates among others.
He noted that in such situation it is other operators that will report that operator to the commission, and added that the commission has not receive such report against any operator as being dormant or idol in the industry. He therefore stated that there are no dormant operators or idle license in the industry.
Nigeria CommunicationsWeek however gathered that the dwindling fortunes of some CDMA operators such as MTS First wireless, Intercellular, Prestel, Rainbownet among others, may have fueled the speculation.
The inability of some of the CDMA operators to compete in the space is as a result failure of their owners to garner the required financial resources to roll out services in major cities in the country.
Some of the operators such as Intercellular which Sudatel acquired 70 percent stake in November 2007, is yet to make any investment to revive the ailing foremost private telecom operator.
Prestel with its unified license won some four years ago is yet to make any major impact even in its perceived operational base of the Niger Delta. This is also attributed to inability of the owners to secure the necessary financial muscle to compete. The lustre performance of these CDMA operators has left the competition to four major operators which included Starcomms, Visafone, Zoom and Multi-Links Telkom.