– NCC Charges Mobile Operators
Stopping short of instantly going from barking to biting, the Nigerian telecom regulator held out the yellow card to mobile operators over plummeting quality of service on their networks, warning it could be forced to take really very drastic action if they failed to address the issue with the urgency it requires.
But the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), which met with mobile operators over the QoS at its headquarters in Abuja, did not just stop there; for, having listened to complaints from the operators, chief of which was their inability – or hurdles on their way – to source foreign exchange, played a rather fatherly role: it made a case to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) for special attention for the telecom industry on forex.
In a statement issued by Mr. Tony Ojobo, the NCC’s Director of Public Affairs, the regulator said this formed part of measures to cushion the situation and ameliorate the recurrent inaccessibility to foreign exchange (forex) by operators.
Indeed, the statement added that the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of the NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta told the operators that the Commission had written to the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, saying the latter “was favourably disposed to addressing the forex needs of the operators.”
And, as a follow up to the letter to the CBN, NCC’s Executive Commissioner (Stakeholders Management) Mr. Sunday Dare was said to have met with Mr. Emefiele and “extracted a commitment from him on how he hoped to address the forex needs of the operators.”
Prof. Danbatta during the interactive session with the operators, which dwelt on Quality of Service delivery said, since “the NCC had declared 2017 as the year of the consumer, all hands should be on deck for telecom consumers to have a fresh lease to high Quality of Service,” the statement added.
“The consumer has to be treated with dignity” Prof. Danbatta added, saying the “8-point agenda drives this point home.”
The NCC, he explained, has put measures in place to check and monitor Quality of Service (QoS) on various networks “and we have sent this report to our task force on QoS and have been interacting with governments at different levels as part of the measures to deal with the poor QoS”.
Danbatta admonished the operators and co-location service operators to provide suggestions on how to address the situation.
Earlier, NCC’s Executive Commissioner (Technical Services), Mr. Ubale Maska said, QoS has been a great concern as consumers inundate the Commission with complaints.
“It requires everybody’s input if the situation has to be redressed, hence 2017 has been declared the year of the Consumer”.
NCC Director, Technical Standards and Network Integrity (DTSNI), Dr. Fidelis Ona, explained that the Commission is aware of some of the challenges which include Right of Way (RoW), Force Majeure, Difficulty in acquiring new cell sites, multiple taxation and regulation, vandalism, power supply among others.
“We are engaging stakeholders, including Industry Working Group on Quality of Service, special committee on Counter Harmonization to address this”.
NCC’s Head, Quality of Service Unit, Engr. Edoyemi Ogoh in his presentation traced poor quality of service to fibre cuts, community issues, among others.
He said in October 2016, operators experienced 175 cuts across the nation while they recorded 180 cuts in November and 103 in December, 2016.
There were 113 community issues in October 2016, 74 in November and 133 in December, adding that fibre cuts and community issues remain major drawbacks for QoS.
In their various presentations, some of the operators painted a grim picture of their encounters.
Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at MTN Nigeria, Mr. Hassan Jamil expressed happiness with the interactive session, so that the regulator can know our situation one on one basis…”
He said demand for both voice and data services are on the rise but we are unable to catch up on investment because of scarce forex availability”.
The catalogue of woes he listed included inability to import equipment to boost expansion:
- We can’t transmit forex to vendors
- Incessant fibre cuts
- Community related challenges
- Scarcity of diesel to power base stations
- Right of Way issues with different layers of government in the regions
- Sabotage at different levels
- We planned 100 sites for Abuja but after a very long time we were only able to build six because of the bottlenecks of getting approvals and until we resolve these, quality of service will be a mirage”
Similar situations were painted by representatives of Globacom Limited, Airtel Nigeria, Etisalat, American Towers Company (ATC), IHS Limited, among others.
The EVC encouraged the operators to be more creative by adopting alternative source of energy like solar power as a stop gap.