Bowing to the avalanche of complaints from subscribers, the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) recently banned telecoms service providers from doing promotions and lotteries on their networks. But subscribers insist NCC should move beyond that and compel operators to compensate them for the long period of poor service delivery. LUCAS AJANAKU reports
If Onyekachi Aguomuo, a lawyer, had an option, his recent experience with his global system for mobile (GSM) communication service provider would have made him to stop using mobile phone. He had re-united with four colleagues with whom he did the Advanced Level General Certificate of Education (GCE) at the Federal School of Arts and Science, Sokoto, between 1986 and 1988.
He was so excited about the re-union that the he immediately put a call across to his wife to share the joy with him. For so long, he tried without success. When what appeared like respite came his way, he was dumbfounded to hear: “The number you have called is incorrect. Please check it and call again.”
He was frustrated, especially when his service provider told him that he no longer knew the number of his wife. “I was shocked to hear that. I scrolled through the phone and double-checked the number and when I was convinced that the number was correct, I dialled again. The call came through but the joy of getting to talk to her evaporated like soap bubbles when the conversation snapped when she had hardly spoken with one of them,” Aguomuo told The Nation.
He said the operators were acting with impunity, wondering if there was no law to check their excesses.
Felix Momodebe, a Computer Engineering graduate of the Lagos State University (LASU) also has a bitter experience with his service provider. A National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member in Osun State, he was “broke” and needed to make calls to his parents in Kogi State. After many fruitless attempts to call his mummy’s number, he tried that of his uncle. With only N50 worth of airtime on his phone, he dialled the number of his uncle only for his operator to divert the call to another person. “All I heard from the other end was that you have dialled a wrong number. By the time I checked the credit on my phone, it had depleted. I was livid with anger because the call I intended putting across to my parents was that of a child in distress. I had no money on me and our ‘allowee’ was not ready,” he complained.
The experience of Aguomuo and Momodebe are but few of the over 105 million telecoms subscrbers in Nigeria that daily pass through one form of agony or the other in their efforts to use their mobile phones owing to congestion on the network. As a matter of fact, sector analysts say persistent congestion on the network has led to break down in marriages while business opportunities have also been lost.
Momodebe carpeted the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for not doing enough to protect the subscribers. “The NCC ought to do more than it is doing by ensuring that the consumers are adequately protected. It should not have stopped at stopping promos and lotteries, it should have gone further by asking the operators to compensate their subscribers as it happened during the days of his predecessor,” he said, adding that none of the big players is living up to the expectation of their subscribers.
For Aguomuo, the reign of impunity that has been the hallmark of operators of GSM in the country is disturbing. According to him, whenever a subscriber buys a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM), activates and loads it with recharge card, a contract is entered into between the subscriber and the operator, adding that any breach of that contract by way of poor service quality is intolerable. “The regulator, having established, through the appropriate unit, that the contract has been breached should step in and impose sanction on the erring party,” he said, adding that compensating subscrbers for long period of poor service is not out of the point at this time.
Network congestion in the country has further been worsened by the cut-throat competition the operators are engaged in. They promise aircraft, luxury bus and various goodies, including almost 500 per cent free talk time, which had inevitably led to congestion of the network, leading to unauthorised call diversion and routing calls into voice mails.
Experts say network congestion causes poor reception, drop calls, poor voice signal as well as clogging of interconnect routes between networks.
Regulators’ perspective
Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, said she is also worried by the situation of things as hardly a day passess without people complaining. “I am quite aware of the poor quality of service, which seems to be getting worse by the day. Quality of service is probably one of the biggest issues that the industry is dealing with right now and it is important that consumers understand what the issues are and what the Ministry and NCC, the regulator, are doing about it. At present, the telecoms industry has some problems with the inadequate number of base stations, arbitrary cost and lengthy process of right of way acquisition, persistent interruptions as they try to lay cables even after obtaining right of way, wilful and accidental damage to fibre optic cables and base stations and ofcourse illegal taxes and levies by a number of state and local governments all of which work together to affect quality of service,” she said, adding that she has studied at the newly gazetted quality of service indicators which has these challenges and problems built into it.
“We are not asking for 99.9 per cent network uptime or a zero per cent call drop rate or 100 per cent successful call set up. For this reason, I have asked the NCC to start the process of not only publishing performance on quality of service by operator per month but also impose meaningful penalties on operators that do not meet the targets set. Performance and penalties will be published on NCC websites monthly. In other words, there shall be consequences for network operators that do not meet this quality of service indicators. I don’t believe that there is any self-respecting company that wants to be constantly and continously penalised by its regulator; so it is expected that this singular action will result in more effort being placed on improving quality of service by all network operators,” she added.
Stakeholders’ perspective
President of the Nigeria Internet Group (NIG), Bayo Banjo, blamed the development on the era of weak regulation. Acording to him, the regulator, the NCC has become a toothless bulldog that could only bark. Banjo, who is the immediate past vice president, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), argued that the practice in developed countries is that the government approaches the issue with a stick and carrot.
He said like what happened in the financial sector, any erring telco chief should be shown the way out.
For the Chief Executive Officer,Teledon Group,Dr. Emmanuel Ekuwem, the situation could truncate the Vision 20:2020 programme of the Federal Government. He lamented that in this information age, anything that would hinder the free flow of information and spread of knowledge would do collateral damage to the nation.
He blamed the problem on “low capacity”and the refusal of the operators to plough back substantial part of their mega profits into expanding the network.
But President, National Association of Telecom Subscribers (NATCOMS), Deolu Ogunbanjo,disagrees with subscribers over demand for compensation. According to him, the operators should be given another three-month window within which to do the right thing, especially when it was realised that early in the year, the NCC had fined them N1.17 billion for failing to comply with the minimum standard of quality of service.
While MTN and Etisalat coughed out N360 million each, Airtel and Glo paid N270 million and N180 million to the Federal Government.
But operators say they were not responsible for the problem. President, Association of Licenced Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ALTON) Gbenga Adebayo, said bombs and floods had affected quality service provison in the country.
According to him, the incidents affected over 250 Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) that lost connection (due to primary and secondary impact) and many suffered significant damage beyond repairs. Added to this is the usual resort to closing BTS by agents of the government over refusal to pay charges that are not known to law, adding that when one base station is closed, it affects others because of the inability to connect calls from the closed BTS.
While Director, Public Affairs, NCC, Tony Ojobo, said the agency was monitoring the performance of the operators since they and the regulator have agreed to key performance indicators (KPIs), which they must not go below, subscribers say the horse must have starved to death before the grass grows.
