" ITREALMS: Senate warns telcos’ CEOs

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Senate warns telcos’ CEOs

The Nigerian Senate has warned the chief executive officers (CEOs) of all the telecommunications companies in the country to desist from shunning it’s summon or face the wrath of the upper legislative house.

The Senate gave this note of warning at the weekend during a one-day public hearing on Quality of Service (QoS) at a chamber of the National Assembly Abuja, organised by the Committees on Communication and Commerce.

Speaking through the chairman, Senate Committee on Communication, Senator Sylvester Ndubuisi Anyanwu, the upper house expressed dismay over the inability of any of chief executives of telcos invited for the forum that was present, especially across the four Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) operators, namely the MTN, Globacom, Celtel and M-Tel.

Senator Anyanwu who presided over the public hearing stressed the importance of the CEOs of telcos and mostly of GSM companies, saying that it’s disheartening that they would be invited before the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and they would send representatives.

“Its no longer business as usual,” he warned.

He also sounded a note of warning that the experiment of last week should serve as last warning, because his committee is capable of dragging such unsubmissive CEOs to the floor of the Senate to face probe and could even go the mileage of suspending the licenses of defaulting telco’s.

Apparently irked by the absence of these CEOs, Senator Anyanwu asserted that if it is in the United States, they would not dare to shun Senate summon.

All the representatives of GSM operators at the forum, which was monitored in Lagos on African Independent Television (AIT) and Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), were shunned as soon as they introduced themselves as representatives with flimsy excuses that their chief executives travelled out of the country or just arrived last night.

Senator Anyanwu equally advised all the representatives to wait after the session so as to take a new date for them accompanied by their chief executives to appear before the committee, but insisted that they take enough note on the reports from the forum, because they must respond to them.

He stressed that the emphasise on these chief executives being present goes beyond mere explanation of technicalities of their operations, adding that the Senate intends to get affirmation from them too on whatever would be arrived at as matter of their response.

He further asked the GSM operators to come up with a working document on how to improve the quality of service on their networks when coming for the special session after they have taken their dates.

The Senate, he pointed out would like to see a working document on how they intend to solve the issues at hand, especially on the poor quality of service, which he said must be signed before the Senate and at least and solve the problem before December this year.

Declaring open the forum, Senate President, Dr. David Mark reiterated this position and said that there is no acceptable excuse for the increased drop calls among the telcos in the country, noting that something must be done very quickly too.

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