Besides, the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS) has also said that failure by the operators to improve their service offerings, may compel subscribers in the country to switch off their mobile phones to press home their grievances.
A top official of NCC, who spoke to The Guardian on the condition of anonymity at the weekend, stated that virtually all service providers including MTN, Airtel, Globacom and Etisalat might not meet the commission’s Key Performance Indicator (KPI) for the month of May, stressing that the services on the networks were nothing to write home about.
Indeed, subscribers in the country have had it a raw deal this season, with increase in drop calls; uncompleted calls, among others.
Besides, system generated messages, such as “all trunks are busy”, “the number you have dialed is not on the network”, “the number you have dialed is incorrect”, “please check the number and dial again”, have been the order of the day.
The NCC’s Director of Public Affairs, Dr. Tony Ojobo, attested to the sharp decline in service quality and planned sanctions against erring operators, which failed to meet the commission’s set KPIs for the month of May.
While not ruling out the fact that the recently introduced Mobile Number Portability (MNP), which is already in its first month could have also contributed to service quality challenges, Ojobo said: “We have observed that the service quality has gone down again. We have received complaints from subscribers who said they have tried to do one thing or the other on the networks, which was futile. Based on these complaints, NCC has asked the operators to explain why the situation is so. We are not stopping at that; we are also deploying our engineers to test their (operators’) facilities.
“We are also carrying out test to determine the culpability of the newly introduced MNP. You are also aware that we recently lifted bans on promo and lotteries in the industry. We are going to measure KPIs for the month of May and any operator, which failed to meet up with the required standard will be adequately penalised.”
But the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS), NCC should not have lifted the ban on promos and lotteries, stressing that this has indeed compounded the traffic the networks are carrying.
National President of the body, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, who said that the lifting of the ban on promos by the NCC had worsened the service by the providers, said the association will be sending a Save our Soul (SoS) message to the Association of Licenced Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), for it to appeal to its members to compensate subscribers with N5,000 airtime on their networks.
He said failure by ALTON to get this done, would see NATCOMS reporting the matter to NCC, stressing that a possible court summon on the operators will be inevitable, should the regulator not take action.
Ogunbanjo also intimated that “NATCOMS would ask all subscribers to switch-off their phones, atleast for a day to be able press home our grievances against poor service quality. You know, we need to explore every available option to correct this dis-service.”
The NATCOMS president, who spoke to The Guardian at the weekend, noted that promos and lotteries were still causing congestion from the telecoms operators, thereby affecting the quality of service across the networks.
He said that subscribers had not enjoyed uninterrupted service from telecommunications operators since the lifting of the ban in April by the NCC.
Ogunbanjo said that promotions could resume when the operators stabilised the networks to the required capacities.
``However, we cannot compromise good quality for promos; we prefer good quality services than promos. So, there is nothing wrong if NCC should resume the ban on them.
``Subscribers do need compensation and we are talking about airtime; airtime compensation of N5,000 each; that will be a little succour to compensate for the poor service.
``Where the NCC fines and it is only the government that reaps the benefits, without any direct benefit to the subscribers, is not tidy.
``We are presently demanding N5,000 for subscribers on every network particularly Glo, MTN, Airtel and Etisalat.
``You hardly can make a call of 25 to 30 seconds without uninterrupted network problem.
``You will definitely be lucky to get through the network without saying ‘hello, hello’,” Ogunbanjo said.
He said that although the subscribers were the ones enjoying the promos and lotteries, it was currently congesting the network.
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