Nigeria’s telecom firms face fresh sanctions

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has concluded plan to invoke another round of sanctions on telecommunication operators beginning from September if the quality of service remains the same, according NCC’s Communications Director, Public Affairs, Mr Tony Ojobo.

He said that at the time of the last sanction operators made presentation on the issue of Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) at the meeting with the commission.

Ojobo said that at the meeting the commission agreed on a medium base line of KPI that the operators needed to begin to work on progressively until they met the commission ultimate KPI. He added that at the meeting the NCC gave the service providers a deadline of September to ensure a progressive improvement on the poor quality of service.

“But at the meeting it was agreed that by September if the quality of service remained as it was then the commission would invoke another sanction.

“So because of that they are all working on their networks to make sure that quality of service improves. We are noticing some improvement in some of the networks in term of quality of service. It is not really what it should be but I think it is better than what we have two months ago as at the time of the fine,’’ Ojobo said.

According to him, the operators wrote to NCC to update the commission on what they had done so far to improve on the quality of service.

He said that the commission noticed that there were number of networks that were expanding and also upgrading their networks.

Ojobo said that the operators were putting in new technology to address the challenges that had resulted to the poor quality of service in the country.

According to him, the issue of drop calls has really reduced, few months ago every particular call made drops before one finishes his conversation.

“That is an indication that there is some improvement, NCC does depend on personal or consumers experience to determine weather there is improvement until the commission undergoes a drive test.

Ojobo added that a drive test was when the commission’s monitoring team drove through the city with their equipment which took the frequency reading and later analysed with the reading that would be taken from the premises of the service providers.

He said that the commission had its independent consultant that carried out the drive test across the area that took the measurement which would later be compared with what the commission obtained from the service providers equipment.