Nigerian Telecom Operators' networks go bunkers again

Telecom masts: why! are they no longer doing their work?

By Prince Osuagwu

 It seems the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, may have to act faster than it had planned, to punish the telecom operators  whose quality of service, QoS, do not give good taste. This is because at the moment, there are ceaseless complaints, anguish and scores of swears by subscribers over poor services that do not give them value for their money.
For unexplained reasons, the quality of service of major telecom operators in Nigeria in the last three weeks, have dropped, leaving hapless subscribers with bitter experiences in non call completion, dropped calls and cross connection errors among others.
Penultimate week, Globacom switched off on majority of its subscribers in major parts of Lagos metropolis, for about two days, before it was discovered that one of its major switches in Lagos was engulfed by fire. The Second National Operator is yet to be free from that misfortune as the snarl on its network is still conspicuous.
For MTN, some of its subscribers are complaining that they never had it so bad. For some of them, initiating calls from MTN lines to other networks would either leave the caller with false information that the number dialed does not exist or quietly drives him into the voice mail service.
Airtel seems to be good when connecting another Airtel but leaves the subscriber hopeless when dialing another operator. Etisalat will connect the caller but dash the hope mid way when the call would drop.
Some post paid subscribers to these networks are not recounting good experiences either. They worry over the billing and accounting systems of the operators, decrying a new turn of events on the negative.
While some complain of over- billing, others allege that their bill payments are not being credited in good time to allow them carry out their respective businesses on phone.
Penultimate week the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC Dr Eugene Juwah did admit that the commission had for so long left the operators to self-regulate themselves on Quality of Service but regretted the shocking realisation that things were rather getting worse. He promised that whichever operator the Key Performance Index, KPI, his commission has put in place, indicted, would be punished to feel equal pain the subscribers were going through at the moment.
Perhaps this is the time to act. Although, a strong NCC source has confirmed that NCC is now articulating complaints of poor quality of telecom services and apparently equal measure of punishments and may wield the big stick any moment.
This is even as the regulator also tackles the operators on new SIM Cards, giving directions that new SIM Cards being released into the distribution/sales channels of the operators from February 14 2011shall henceforth be activated with ‘receive only’ and such subscribers should also be enabled to make calls to the emergency numbers and operators’ call centres for a period of thirty (30) days, after which they shall become inactive if not registered .
The commission charged the operators to ensure full compliance with the direction , saying that it shall at the expiration of the deadline enforce compliance and all defaulting network operators shall be sanctioned in accordance with the provisions of the Nigerian Communications Act, 2003 and the Enforcement Regulations 2005.
NCC said that there will be penalty for default in the first instance followed with surcharges for each day the violation lasted.
It could be recalled that the Commission, penultimate week formally entered into agreement with seven companies that will handle the SIM Registration process in different zones of the country.
The activities of the contracting partners will be coordinated by KPMG, an international professional services firm with a member firm in Nigeria. The firm will provide end-to-end project management coordination of the entire project within the contract’s live span of six months.
Although operators started SIM Card Registration since last year, registering only about 12million at the moment, the NCC driven phase of SIM Registration is expected to last for 6months covering the remaining SIMs of over 72million.