" ITREALMS: Minna hosts telecom parliament tomorrow

Monday, May 26, 2008

Minna hosts telecom parliament tomorrow

The 46th edition of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC’s) Telecom Consumer Parliament would tomorrow, Tuesday May 27, 2008 hold at the Shiroro Hotel, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe Way, Minna, Niger State.

Head, Public Affairs at NCC, Mr. Dave Imoko who disclosed this at the weekend said that the parliament is billed to take off at 12.00noon prompt.

He also noted that the monthly Telecom Consumer Parliament puts telecoms operators and the industry regulator on the spotlight of the consumers.

Just as he said, the 46th edition of the event would deal with the services of both fixed line and mobile operators.

The parliament, he said, would handle all issues pertaining to quality of service, consumer rights protection, environmental impact assessment, interconnection, tariffs and Universal Service Provision (USP) among others.

He explained that the programme would also feature a forum discussion with the title “Consumer Rights and Education”.

The audience, he said, would include major stakeholders in the industry, opinion leaders, public affairs and policy analysts, government officials and students.

Mr. Imoko, therefore advised interested public among all telecoms services consumers to attend the interactive programme that would be recorded for a network broadcast on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA) and other television stations.

Meanwhile, as part of its responsibilities in educating the telecom consumers in the country, NCC recently warned subscribers to be cautious about some dubious text messages making a round that people should switch off their mobile phones for the fear of an alleged radiation wave.

A press statement made available to Daily Champion informed that the attention of the Commission, has been drawn to the content of what he described as “a dubious text messages which asked users of mobile phones to switch off their handsets at 11 PM penultimate Tuesday, May 20, 2008, to avoid alleged radiation wave that may circulate through “handphone towers”.

According to him, the commission wishes to advise the general public to discountenance such dubious messages, as there is still no conclusive evidence of any harmful effects of mobile phone usage, or telecommunications towers.

NCC, he said, has noted that the text must have originated from some unscrupulous elements in the society who are bent on misinforming the public, therefore the Commission maintained that the content of the text message is incorrect, and the

“Metro TV” station quoted as the source of the story is non-existent in Nigeria.

He emphasised that mobile phone handsets and towers were not designed to be controlled remotely as to cause any harmful radiation as suggested in the text message.

“Such equipment are designed to have limited radiation capacity in order to avoid harmful radiation effects in their usage,” he said.

Imoko further added that the World Health Organization (WHO), has been involved in several research studies to determine the possibility of harmful effects in the use of mobile phones and towers.

He pointed out that such studies have never led to any conclusive evidence that mobile phones and towers cause harmful radiation of any kind.

“Several studies have also been carried out in the UK, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, and other European countries from 2004 till date without any conclusive evidence about the harmful effects of mobile phone handsets or towers,” he said.

The public, especially subscribers of telecommunications in the country are hereby warned to ignore any of such text messages in the future as the Commission is in the better position to inform the public “if, and whenever there is any harmful effect in the use of any telecommunications equipment.”

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