In a desperate last minute bid to beat the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) June 30th deadline for all existing GSM subscribers to register their subscriber identification module (SIM) or risk disconnection, not a few Nigerians went into a frenzy penultimate Sunday. It was a tale of anguish, sorrows and tears, reports Ibrahim Apekhade Yusuf
CHAOS. That best described the situation penultimate Sunday as mobile telephone subscribers in the country on Sunday embarked on a last minute rush to register their subscriber identification module (SIM) cards in their desperation to beat the June 30 deadline.
From the expressed anguish in their countenances, it was apparent that these set of Nigerians were wary of losing what they reckoned was their most prized possession, GSM lines, what with the way they defied the early morning drizzle.
Expectedly, not many of these hopeful subscribers were able to register their lines at the end of the day, thus fuelling speculations that a possible extension could be allowed.
It also instructive to note that many subscribers who had undertaken to register their lines long before the deadline also suffered similar fate as the laggards.
Speaking to a cross section of respondents who had their lines blocked, they all spoke in anguish. “In a civilised country we could have taken a class action against these networks for rendering us practically incommunicado for no fault of ours. But then, this is only possible in a country like Nigeria,” lamented Adio Musbau, a mobile telecom subscriber whose two lines were blocked by the networks.
Intense lobby
Firing the first salvo, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria had written to the NCC, asking for an extension of the deadline for the SIM card registration.
The association said it was concerned about the notice of instruction for mass disconnection of unregistered subscribers with effect from June 30, 2013.
The letter, which was addressed to the Executive Vice- Chairman of the commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah, read in part, “SIM card registration has been ongoing for a while but subscribers have embraced this exercise more in the past few weeks leading to the June 30, 2013 deadline.
“Also, in the light of the security situation in the country and the general logistic problem, it has been very difficult for the subscribers, registration agents and our members (operators) to meet the June 30, 2013 deadline.”
But in a swift reaction, the NCC through its Director of Public Affairs, Mr. Tony Ojobo, said there was not going to be no extension.
It had been reported that about 19.16 million subscribers across the country might be disconnected from mobile telecommunication networks following the directive from the regulatory agency.
This represents the number of subscribers that were not registered during the national Subscriber Identity Module card registration exercise that kicked off in the country on February 28, 2011.
Sources had indicated that the SIM card registration exercise recorded about 80 per cent success.
This means that about 20 per cent of the nation’s active subscriber base was not registered by the time the first phase of the exercise ended.
As at the time the exercise ended, the subscriber base stood at 95,886,714. Twenty per cent of this base sums up to 19,117,342 subscribers.
Although the active subscriber base has since surpassed 110,000,000, new subscribers could not be involved in the calculation as additional subscribers must have registered before their SIM cards were activated.
Speaking exclusively with The Nation, he said it was unthinkable to suggest another extension given the fact that the NCC had given well over 27 months grace period for the exercise.
“It is practically unthinkable to say we should give further extension. We expect by now that every subscriber must have duly registered their lines because there is no going back on the disconnection, this is inevitable.
“Let me also state that the Nigerian Communications Commission is ready to sanction telecom operators that fail to disconnect unregistered subscribers. They will face sanctions from the regulatory agency. No operator would go unpunished if it failed to comply with the directive to switch off all unregistered subscribers.”
He said, “No extension of time has been given and we have given directive to all operators to disconnect all unregistered SIM cards.
“We are not going to sit down at the switches of the operators, but we know how to monitor them. If we establish any non-compliance, they will be sanctioned. For now, we don’t have the number of SIM cards that have been disconnected but we are monitoring the situation.”
An official of the MTN, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the press, told The Nation that the telecoms giant was not worried over the planned threat by the NCC to cut off subscribers yet to register their lines following the expiration of the deadline penultimate Sunday.
According to him, the company did everything humanly possible to ensure that its subscribers meet the deadline set by the NCC. As such, any subscriber yet to duly register his or her lines should be ready to face the music.
“I recalled that we dedicated many outlets where our subscribers could go and register their lines. In some cases, we had to call our subscriber directly, especially those who initially did their registration halfway in order to complete the process and for every request we made, we backed it up with free recharge card vouchers valued at N400. So, if for instance we called a customer thrice in order to authenticate his details such as inquiry on his/or her state of origin, mother’s maiden name, among others, we ensured that for every separate request made, the customer in question earned some free credit to compensate for his time and all of that.
“So, having done this, we believe that our subscribers availed themselves of the opportunity allowed by the grace period. As for now we are no longer registering lines except those newly acquired.”
The source recalled that most network operators had sent an email to subscribers, stating that “In line with the directive of the NCC that all SIM cards be registered, we implore all our existing subscribers to register their SIM at any of our dealer outlets nationwide to register their SIMs.”
A fait accompli
After what seems an agonising wait, subscribers who failed to meet the June 30th deadline set by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) have since being disconnected from the network just as the NCC had threatened to do.
Sharing her experience, Ms. Patience Akpabio, an MTN subscriber, recalled that she received the above text message at about 7.30 pm on Thursday night and exactly two minutes away from midnight, his line was barred from making calls and text messages among others.
Mrs. Akpabio, who claimed to have been registered before, was swearing at the top of her voice that she was going to port to another line in protest against what she considered a selective treatment.
“I registered my line sometime in March when I had gone to retrieve it following misplacement. I was therefore taken aback on Friday morning when I was told that I couldn’t make calls anymore. In fact, I’m going to port to another network. There is no point enduring the maltreatment by the MTN,”she lamented.
During a visit to the MTN at their Matori office, a staff of the company who answered queries from our correspondent, said it was unfortunate that some subscribers had to be disconnected. According to him, “Enough notice was given for anybody who suspected he may not have been duly registered to do so. For those who couldn’t, they have to forfeit their lines.”
Citing different text messages sent to subscribers, the source said it was only inevitable that the network had to defer to the NCC by disconnecting some of its subscribers that were yet to be registered.
Investigation by The Nation revealed that some of the network operators may have lost a chunk of their data during the flood which ravaged different parts of the country coupled with the insurgent attacks and excruciating cost of maintaining its infrastructure across the country.
Giving an insight, Lynda Saint-Nwafor, who heads MTN’s Core Network Planning Strategy, the unit responsible for designing and planning all aspects of MTN’s network operations, said the telecoms sector was still smarting from the problem of flooding and insurgent attacks on its infrastructure.
The industry, she stressed, “has not fully recovered. This is because it will take more than targeted interventions to make sure that floods don’t become an issue this year and also rebuild the entire infrastructure that we lost to the insurgency. Recovery is going to be a long process because as we speak there are more attacks on our infrastructure in the North and in some of those places where the attacks have subsided; access is restricted because security agencies are still giving us a red flag. So, it’s going to take a while for the industry to get back to where it was pre-flood and insurgency.”
Speaking specifically on the effect on its business and the level of repairs so far, Saint-Nwafor said: “We had over 220 sites impacted by the incessant attacks in the North and to date we have been able to restore services to about 60 percent of those sites. We monitor the improvement in security in those areas before we deploy our staff and contractors for restoration activities. But I must say that there are some areas we were not allowed to come back to. The communities feel that the presence of telecoms infrastructure is a risk to them and so do not want anything to do with us, posing a big challenge to the restoration effort.”
Expatiating, she said: “The ecosystem – in the delivery of telecommunication services, there are so many factors at play, starting with the government; the required approvals, the issue of permits, and multiple taxation; the fact that we can’t move when we want to move because there are certain dependencies that we have to deal with. Then continuous and consistent vandalism of our infrastructure – last year alone, we had upwards of 1000 fibre cuts on our network; and between November and December, we registered about 160 cuts in just one month. Finally, power which contributes circa 70 percent of all the failures on the network is a major challenge, which by implication means that when the issues in the power sector are resolved and our Base Stations are all connected to the national grid, 70 percent of the bad experiences Nigerians have on the network will be a thing of the past.”
