22nd May, 2012
The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS) has appealed to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to use the N1.17 billion fine imposed on some telecommunications operators to compensate subscribers.
The president of the association, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, made the appeal during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, in Lagos, saying that subscribers bore the brunt of the poor service delivery by the operators.
According to him, subscribers are the worst hit by the poor services of the GSM operators and they should, therefore, be compensated.
He said the NCC, as the telecommunications regulator, had the responsibility to ensure that users of their services were not exploited.
Ogunbanjo said the fine imposed on operators would let them know that Nigerians could no longer tolerate poor services.
“The money must be passed on to subscribers according to their volume of calls and usage of the Internet. The regulator should rather compel operators that were fined to provide free services to compensate for their regular poor services.
“When the blackberry service messed up for about four days sometimes last year, the operator did not wait for NCC to slam them. The blackberry company had the decency to extend everybody’s subscription for about four days as compensation, but our GSM operators are not like that.
“Telecoms operators should be made to provide free services for one week without service interruption,” the NATCOMS boss said.
Recently, MTN Nigeria, Etisalat, Airtel and Globacom were panalised by the NCC for poor services to subscribers in March and April.
They were ordered to pay N1.17 billion as fines, with MTN expected to pay N360 million, Etisalat N360 million, Airtel N270 million, and Globacom, N180 million.
—Henry Ojelu