The Nation Newspaper

Tag: NCC

  • ATCON to NCC: protect smaller players

    ATCON to NCC: protect smaller players

    The Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) has stressed the need for regulatory intervention to safe smaller players in the telecoms space.

    The group warned that if the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) fails to intervene, smaller players in the industry may go into extinction.

    Its President, Lanre Ajayi however said caution must be taken in the course of doing this so that success is not punished.

    He spoke with The Nation against the backdrop of calls for structural readjustment in the telecoms sector owing to the presence of dominant operatorship in the industry.

    He said: “This is an area that

    has to be carefully addressed. This is because you don’t want to punish success; you don’t want to punish someone that has invested. We are encouraging people to come and invest and they have invested and are getting big. You don’t want to start punishing them because they are getting big because in the first place, you pleaded with them to bring their money to come and invest in your environment and they have done that and they are expanding, that should make us happy right. We should not make deliberate efforts to start punishing them. “But on the other hand too, if care is not taken they will grow so big that they would not allow the smaller ones to grow. So there is also a need for a regulatory responsibility in that perspective that would ensure that you do not use your market size as a deterrent for smaller ones.”

    On whether the NCC is doing enough, he said the regulator is doing something, adding that its best may not be good enough though.

    “Well, I will say the NCC is doing something but maybe not enough. Well because I know for a fact that NCC introduced an asynchronous inter-connect billing which made the older company to pay more interconnect rate than the newer company. It’s a deliberate policy to encourage younger business to grow. So that’s a policy in that respect.

    “I will not say the NCC is not doing anything about it; rather, the NCC is actually doing something. And again you will realise that at some point, the NCC regulated about having separate billings for off net and on net. At some point NCC made some regulation in that area; that is also to a sort of move to discourage market dominance and prevent roughshod ride over the smaller players. So with those examples you will agree with me that NCC is doing something but can they do more, maybe yes,” he said.

     

  • NCC investigates MTN for copyright violation

    NCC investigates MTN for copyright violation

    In a bid to continue its mandate of protecting the copyright of Nigerian creatives, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) has invited telecommunications giant, MTN to appear at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja on Monday, September 28, over allegations of copyright infringement brought against it by Omenuwoma Okson Dovie.

    According to a letter addressed to the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria Communications Limited and signed by NCC’s Director of Prosecution, A. T. Kohol, the CEO is expected to bring ‘all relevant documents including but not limited to call logs to assist in the criminal investigations.’

    Dovie, also known as Baba2010 is claiming criminal violation involving MTN’s use of his works as caller ring back tones.

     

  • NCC confiscates N1.5b pirated materials in Lagos

    The Nigerian Copyrights Commission (NCC) has confiscated pirated materials worth N1.5billion during a raid at Apapa Wharf Terminal in Lagos.

    Its Director-General, Afam Ezekude, told journalists that pirated goods have been seized from several states such as Kwara, Nassarawa, Abuja and Lagos where materials running into billions of naira were found so far this year.

    He said literary works such as former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s memoir: My Watch, foreign DVD’s and musical works were among a long list of copyrighted products being pirated.

    Ezekude said a crackdown on illegal production and distribution of copyright work led to the arrest of eight people in Kaduna town on July 22.

    NCC, he said, also confiscated over 4,700 copies of musical CDs, DVDs and VCDs estimated at N2million in Enugu State on August 5.

    Arrested suspects will be charged to court soon, the commission added.

  • NCC probes for MTN for copyright violation

    NCC probes for MTN for copyright violation

    In a bid to continue its mandate of protecting the copyright of Nigerian creatives, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) has invited telecommunications giant, MTN to appear at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja on Monday, September 28, over allegations of copyright infringement brought against it by Omenuwoma Okson Dovie.

    According to a letter addressed to the Chief Executive Officer of MTN Nigeria Communications Limited and signed by NCC’s Director of Prosecution, A. T. Kohol, the CEO is expected to bring ‘all relevant documents including but not limited to call logs to assist in the criminal investigations.’

    Dovie, also known as Baba2010 is claiming criminal violation involving MTN’s use of his works as caller ring back tones.

  • NCC clamps down on pirates

    NCC clamps down on pirates

    Acting on complaints brought to its office by the Yoruba Movie Marketers Association, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC) yesterday arrested 35 suspected pirates who were parading the streets of Lagos with illicit copies of home videos and audio CDs.

    The Lagos Zonal Director, Mr Chris Nkwocha, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that those arrested contravene the Copyright Law of Section (38), Sub-section 1.

    According to Nkwocha, the suspected pirates were arrested on the streets of Iyana-Ipaja, Iyana-Iba, Ojo, Obalende and Oshodi respectively, stating that the suspected pirates are now in police custody. He said that they will be charged to court after a thorough investigation for prosecution.

    He also revealed that about 50,000 copies of CDs and DVDs estimated at about N2million were seized from the suspects.

    Nkwocha said that the anti-piracy raids were carried out in major markets and streets of Lagos, a commercial hub for pirates who sell unauthorised works.

    “The raids (were) carried out based on complaints brought to the Commission by Yoruba Movie Marketers Association. The Commission had to speed up action to come to the aid of the association because piracy is a punishable offence in the copyright law. The commission has the right to arrest anyone who is involved in illegal copyright activity. We then ensure that such person goes to court for prosecution,” he said.

    Nkwocha said that the raids were successfully carried out with the assistance of officers of the Nigerian Army, the Police, the Lagos State Video Censors Board and that of Kick Against Indiscipline (KAI).

    He said that the Commission would not relent in its efforts until it brought piracy to the barest minimum or completely eradicated in the country. He also appealed to the Federal Government to support the commission with necessary funds for effective discharge of its mandate.

  • NCC clamps down on pirates

    NCC clamps down on pirates

    Acting on complaints brought to its office by the Yoruba Movie Marketers Association, the Nigerian Copyright Commission (NCC), on Monday arrested 35 suspected pirates who were parading the streets of Lagos with illicit copies of home videos and audio CDs.

    The Lagos Zonal Director, Mr Chris Nkwocha, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that those arrested contravene Nigeria’s Copyright Law of Section (38), Sub-section 1.

    According to Nkwocha, the suspected pirates were arrested on the streets of Iyana-Ipaja, Iyana-Oba, Ojo, Obalende and Oshodi respectively, stating that they are now in police custody. He said that they will be charged to court after a thorough investigation for prosecution.

    He also revealed that about 50,000 copies of CDs and DVDs estimated at about N2million were seized from the suspects.

    Nkwocha said that the anti-piracy raids were carried out in major markets and streets of Lagos, a commercial hub for pirates who sell unauthorised works.

    “The raids (were) carried out based on complaints brought to the commission by Yoruba Movie Marketers Association. The commission had to speed up action to come to the aid of the association because piracy is a punishable offence in the copyright law. The commission has the right to arrest anyone who is involved in illegal copyright activity. We then ensure that such person goes to court for prosecution,” he said.

    Nkwocha said that the raids were successfully carried out with the assistance of officers of the Nigerian Army, the Police, the Lagos State Video Censors Board and that of Kick against Indiscipline (KAI).

    He said that the commission would not relent in its efforts until it brought piracy to the barest minimum or it is completely eradicated in the country. He also appealed to the Federal Government to support the commission with necessary funds for effective discharge of its mandate.

     

  • NCC decries multiple taxation in telecom sector

    NCC decries multiple taxation in telecom sector

    The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has said efforts have reached advanced stage to address the issue of multiple taxation in the industry.

    The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Professor Umar Garba Danbatta stated this shortly after a meeting with States Desk Officers on Universal Service Provision Fund  (USPF) at the Commission’s head office in Abuja Tuesday.

    Professor Danbatta said the commission was being inundated with complaints from service providers on multiple taxation from the federal, states and local government councils in the country.

    This, he noted, would not allow speedy growth and development of telecommunication infrastructures as the number of subscribers increase on daily basis across the nation.

    He maintained that under his leadership, the NCC would ensure considerable improvement in quality of service and other parameters, stressing that broadband penetration though low in sub-Saharan Africa would be improved upon with time.

    Professor Danbatta said: “Now the fact that we are leading (broadband penetration) and if you translate the penetration rate that is normally provided in percentage into numbers then you will find over 130 million Nigerians with access to GSM services and of course these very high number of subscribers come with its challenges in terms of the degradation of quality of services.

    “The more subscribers you have the more the telecomm services are stretched. They are not stretched above the limit but there is need for urgent measures to be put in place to avoid a situation where we are in like today. Something needs to be done urgently and these measures are measures that the commission can consciously put in place to address the quality of service through making sure that telecoms infrastructure is not vandalized.

    “And through the protection of our telecommunication infrastructure, through facilitating the Right of Way which is something that has to do with gaining access to sites and locations where we need to lay infrastructure like fibre cables. We also need to address the issue of multiple taxation at the federal and state levels and as well as at the local government level as various form of taxation are being introduced and the telecomm services providers are complaining about these multiple taxations.

    “So these are things that the commission can do on its own and the second category is to prevail on operators to expand by way of having more infrastructure to be able to address the high number of subscribers to sort of accessing their services and the way to do that is also by intervening by introducing subsidy to encourage the service providers to go into provision of telecomm infrastructure which is capital intensive.”

    He said the Universal Service Provision Fund was established “based on the recommendation of the ITU that all countries and regulators like NCC should set aside certain percentage of what we called annual operation levy which is 40 percentage.

    “This is normally set aside to drive the activities of USPF so there are resources available but it is the question of making sure that these resources are used to provide telecommunication services in the areas where telecommunication operators wouldn’t want to venture into.

    “So consciously speaking the USPF is intended to address this and as the unwillingness of operators to go into areas and we have define this as rural areas that are underserved or un-served of telecommunications services so when you undertake projects like the School Knowledge Centres, it can be in such places where people in the rural areas can go and learn one or two things about ICT to enable them do activities that are multifaceted,” Professor Danbatta stated.

  • SIM deactivation: NCC, telcos in blame game

    SIM deactivation: NCC, telcos in blame game

    The major network operators (MNOs) have accused the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) of not giving them enough time to tidy up the cleaning of their data before its seven-day ultimatum to deactivate all improperly registered subscriber identity modules (SMSs) on their network.

    An official of one of the operators, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the travails of the subscribers would have been avoided had the regulator given them enough time to do the data cleaning.

    “The deadline given by the NCC is too short considering the total number of customers affected in the data correction. So, it is, indeed, impossible to clean over the 10,000 SIMs within the timeline of the regulator. With the deactivation of these lines, we are losing money because if our customers do not make calls, we don’t make money.

    “So, for us as operators, we are not happy about the development but there is nothing we can do because the NCC is the regulator and whatever step it is taking it says it is in the best interest of the country, we have no choice but to obey it. But quite frankly, we are not happy and our sympathy goes to our customers that are affected by this unfortunate development,” the source said.

    The exercise that started about two weeks ago has seen some 10.7 million lines deactivated across all the network of the MNOs.

    In a telephone interview, Director, Public Affairs, at NCC, Tony Ojobo, had blamed the operators for bringing pains to their customers. He recalled that the issue had been on since 2012, adding that the MNOs had kept vacillating.

    According to him, another reminder was sent to the MNOs last year September, adding that they turned deaf ears to the NCC. He said it was baseless blaming the regulator for their intransigence, arguing that they had more than enough time to correct the SIMs shipped back to them after they were handed over to the NCC and discovered to be defective.

    He said the commission had returned a total of 18.6 million SIM data to MTN; 7.4 million to Airtel; 2.2 million to Globacom and 10.4 million to Etisalat for corrections.

    He said these SIMs had one challenge or the other, including some that were pre-registered and others without the required biometric information. “I think the bulk of the blame would stop on the table of the operators. They failed to do what they were supposed to have done earlier. The commission sent the list of improperly registered subscribers to the operators in September last year.

    He said: “In October 2014, the commission wrote to the service providers indicating that they had still not responded to the communication in terms of those data that were not duly captured and requested that they should do that immediately and get back to the commission. This continued until the meeting of August 4, 2015. The operators were expected to have long before now sent SMS to affected subscribers requesting them to go and get their data corrected or risk deactivation but nothing was done until now.” According to Ojobo, who said any erring operator that still harbours defective SIMs on their network and if detected would pay N200,000 per SIM, according to the stipulated law, noted that deactivation does not mean total withdrawal of the lines, but that it simply indicates that the registration of those particular lines were improper or the data required for a particular information was not captured.

     

  • NCC, MTN, Samsung, Galaxy Backbone, others for NITRA’s confab

    The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Samsung Electronics West Africa, MTN Nigeria and other stakeholders in the information communication technology (ICT) industry have expressed willingness to  be part of an industry-wide forum that will tackle important issues in the industry.

    The seminar, a brainchild of the Nigeria Information and Communication Technology Reporters Association (NITRA), holds on Friday at Westown  Hotels, Ikeja, Lagos.

    With Foreign Direct Investment: An Impetus to Achieving Ubiquitous Broadband Penetration as its theme, regulators, industry leaders and other key stakeholders will share their thoughts on the subject matter.

    Sponsored by MTN Nigeria, Samsung Electronic West Africa, and Galaxy Backbone, the forum has also received the backing of the NCC, National Information Technology Development Agency of Nigeria (NITDA), and other industry stakeholders such as Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), ISPON, NCS, as well as other players in the industry.

    As the lead discussant at the forum, MTN Nigeria will examine the imperatives of Federal Direct Investments (FDIs) for further development of the nation’s ICT sector with a particular focus on broadband while Galaxy Backbone will give details of its activities in the area of e-Government strategy, Samsung will speak of innovation in mobile phone devices, as well as capacity building and skills acquisition.

    With an investment profile of over $13 billion (over N2 trillion) in Nigeria, MTN Nigeria is a market leader with over 62 million subscribers on its network, a total market share of 46 per cent as at June this year.

    Panel sessions will feature specific discussions on regulatory activities, operational activities, investment potential, as well as impediments to the ongoing move to attract further investment into the sector, which has been identified as an investment haven for telecom business by Pyramid Research.

    NITRA President, Mr. Emma Okonji, explained that the ‘NITRA Quarterly Seminar Series,’ which started this year, the third quarter edition has been packaged to highlight the imperatives of ICT investment in the country.

    “With over $32 billion local and foreign direct investment (FDI) and $10 billion needed over the next five years to build a robust Next Generation broadband network as the next growth frontier, the forum provides a veritable platform to tackle constraints to ICT investments.

    “So, the theme of the event could have been more apt and timely, as the forum is coming after Nigeria just entered into a new government and, of course a new chief telecoms regulator, that need to have first-hand opportunity to know what the industry feel about investment drive to further grow the industry,” he said.

    “It is our belief that a forum such as this will make us contribute to the development of ICT industry and would create a meeting point for both private and public sector stakeholders and experts to dialogues as well as being a melting point for cross fertilization of their ideas toward contributing to the policy roadmap to furthering universal access to ICT in the country,” he added.

     

  • NCC chief inaugurates Task Force on service quality

    In line with his pledge to tackle poor quality of service (QoS) headlong, the Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive Officer (CEO),   Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, at the weekend inaugurated a nine-member Task Force to proffer solutions to the problem.

    This was the highlight of his maiden top management meeting at the Commission. The Task Force has just one term of reference, which is “To look at the issue of QoS in all its ramifications and suggest practical measures that will lead to its improvement, and recommend any other measure as appropriate that will project the image of the Commission in a good light.”

    In a statement endorsed by its Director, Public Affairs, Mr. Tony Ojobo, explained that it was agreed at the management meeting that a Task Force be constituted to drive the QoS initiative of the Commission.

    He listed the members of the Task Force to include: Mrs. Iyabo Sholanke, Director, Special Duties, as Chairperson.

    The others are Mr. Fidelis Onah, Director, Technical Standards; Mr. Efosa Idehen, Head, Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement; Mr. Ephraim Nwokenneya, Head Compliance and Monitoring; Mr. Bashir Idris, Deputy Director, Projects, as members.

    The list also include Mrs. Yetunde Akinloye, Head, Legal and Regulatory Services; Mr. Reuben Muoka, Head, Public Relations; Mr. Philp Eretan, Assistant Director, Consumer Affairs and, Mr. Edoyemi Ogoh, Assistant Director, Technical Standards, as members.

    The Task Force is expected to submit its reports to the monthly management meeting of August 21 until the expiration of its tenure in six months.

    In general terms, the Task Force will look at the underlying causes of poor QoS, right of way issues, infrastructural problems and suggest ways out of these.

    Relevant stakeholders are expected to be engaged and advise management on how to tackle this long and windy problem of QoS.