When the monthly Telecoms Consumer Parliament (TCP) was conceived by the founding fathers of Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), it was in partial fulfillment of its role of protecting the consumers. But last week, the regulator suddenly made a detour, preferring to restrict the number of participants at the TCP to ‘important stakeholders’ in the industry. LUCAS AJANAKU reports that shutting the doors against the consumers may do more harm than good.
For regular attendees at the monthly Telecoms Consumer Parliament (TCP), the 75th edition of the forum held last week at Eko Hotel & Suites, Lagos must have come as a shock. For one, the consumers for which the forum was created to provide succour were nowhere to be found. For another, the venue was elitist and would definitely not be attractive to consumers were they invited.
Some people explained that the decision of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to hold the event at the venue was to save cost because earlier on, it had launched the Code of Corporate Governance for the Telecommunications Industry.
In his opening remarks the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr Eugene Juwah, said the feedbacks from TCP had enhanced the regulatory activities of the Commission, adding that Enforcement Regulation and Quality of Service (QoS) Regulation of 2012 were some of the gains of the parliament.
He said the forum has been repackaged to limit participation to major stakeholders to enhance robust discussion and rich discussion.
He lamented that in spite of all that had been done in the industry by the regulator, the vexed issue of poor QoS remained with the industry, adding that issues, such as misleading adverts by operators, poor data services, unsolicited text messages, payment for services not rendered and others were still part of the experience of subscribers. Juwah said the forum would find solutions to all these problems.
While all the telecoms operators in the country were adequately represented with the Director-General, National Lottery Regulatory Commission, Adolphus Joe Ekpe, an important stakeholder, such as Consumer Protection Council (CPC) was not represented at all. Similarly, the National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS) was not represented. Analysts say the refusal of the NCC to extend invitation to the group’s President, Deolu Ogunbanjo may not be unconnected with the fact that the group has dragged the operators and the regulator to court praying for relieves for the subscribers.
Only two self-proclaimed bulwarks of consumer rights movement, Leadership Watch led by Dr Marthins Iwuayanwu and Consumer Empowerment Organisation of Nigeria, led by Adedeji Abiodun were on the occasion to represent the interest of over 130 million subscribers in the country.
NCC’s Director, Consumer Affairs Bureau, Mrs Maryam Bayi said the decision of the regulator was to give a new direction to the idea of the TCP, adding that it has stopped being a forum for consumers to complain about the various fraudulent practices of their service providers. She said such issues will no longer be addressed at the Consumer Parliament but at other fora put in place by the regulator such as Consumer Outreach Programme and Town Hall Meetings.
She identified eight items to be addressed by the elite gathering. The items are: unsolicited text messages/telemarketing; disappearance of air time/dropped balance; drop calls; customer care centre monitoring; inaccessibility of customer care help lines; unlawful deduction of ‘credit’ for value added services (VAS) not subscribed to; poor network service/unavailability of service; and advertisement of unapproved promos.
She advised customers who were disenfranchised from the forum to complain to the Bureau, adding that the first step they should take will be to complain and get a ticket then follow it up by reporting to Bureau through its contact centre should they fail to get redress to their problem.
According to her, consumers don’t usually get opportunity to opt out of some the VAS once they find themselves engaged either by deception or fraudulently by subscribing them to the service. Bayi lamented that when the consumers even get an opportunity to opt out, they are automatically renewed at the end of the month. “We are all fustrtaed,” she said.
Bayi said the network of the operators have become epileptic in some parts of country. according to her, the Bureau received complaints from the Samaru and Congo Campuses of of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria over the poor services of MTN, warning that the industry cannot be sustained without subscribers.
She complained that even when operators were called upon to stop running their deceptive and misleading promos, they usually turned deaf ears to the NCC. She drew their attention to the the requirement that they give the regulator seven days notification before running any promo.
Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Etisalat, Ibrahim Dikko said spam message form the bulk of unsolicited text messages that run on the networks of the telcos but agreed that more needed to be done in the area of giving consumers opportunity to opt in an opt out of vexatious VAS.
He warned subscribers to be wary subscribing to services on their mobile phones without taking a second look, adding that this is partly responsible for the disappearance of consumers’ air time.
Corporate Service Executive at MTN Akinwale Goodluck agreed with Dikko. According to him, a lot of the text messages that broke the sleep of customers were beyond the control of the telcos because they are internet-generated.
According to him, gathering peoples’ data has become big time business as merchants pay desk attendants at functions to sell data collated about guests to them. He said this data are therefore used by all manner of people offering all manners of services to send bulk messages to people.
He said another frightening dimension to the problem is that people buy bulk short message service (SMS) from Russia, Uzbekistan and others and dump them on the network of the telcos. He said the operators are complying with the strict regulation concerning bulk SMS.
Dikko said the problem of drop calls is a combination of several factors. He cited a 15-storey building that suddenly emerged in a neighbourhood very close Etisalat’s BTS. He said the building led to network issues and forced the telco to relocate the BTS so that customers’ experience will not be degraded. He said people stroll with impunity to decommission and seal BTS, preventing access to the sites by people employed to keep it running.
Goodluck lamented that artificial constraints were still being put on the way of roll out of infrastructure in the country. According to him, operators were still being prevented from laying optic fibre cables in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja. He lamented that, three of the four telcos have the BTS switched off in Enugu State, adding that nobody dared walk into the facility of a power plant and vandalise it willfully yet, telecoms infrastructure is as critical and central to modern economic development as power infrastructure.
Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Airtel Osondu Nwokoro said only advocacy can help address the problem.
Participants at the even,t however, lamented the absence of consumers at a parliament described as consumers.
“It is curious why the regulator decided to shut its doors against the consumers that are direct victims of the inadequacies of the operators. The outreach programme and town hall meetings Mrs Bayi is talking about is not as popular as the TCP. For instance, as educated as I am, I have never attended any of these two programmes. It is not because I don’t want to attend, it is because I have never heard information about when they will be held. I only get to see reports in the newspaper about the programmes after they must have been held. You will have noticed that the event was so dry, stale and colourless. It was so because the aggrieved subscribers that used to bring live into the proceedings were shut out,” one of the participants said.
