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Showing posts with label TelecomsClinic@ITREALMS ... making leadership. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TelecomsClinic@ITREALMS ... making leadership. Show all posts

Monday, April 10, 2023

Beauty of harmonised USSD code in Nigeria - ITREALMS

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The harmonisation of the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) notch for the telecoms sector is timeous, handy, and memorizable, writes ITREALMS’ REMMY NWEKE, with applause for the Industry Working Group (IWG) and all other parties involved in signing off on this initiative as Nigerians await the 5G bouquet.

Prelude:

In a suburb of Lagos known as Bolade in the Oshodi-Isolo Local Government Area of the commercial city, a single mother identified as Iya Hannah Odewale operates an airtime kiosk. She deals in all manners of airtime; from phone airtime also called ‘credit’ in local parlance to providing top-ups for decoders, among others in the neighbourhood.

She also has a neighbour who works at a customer service centre of one of the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) known as Onyi Kachiukwu. One thing these neigbhours have in common is that they reside in same building at the neighbourhood and with the coming of the introduction of the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) by mobile operators to conduct some services including checking of balances on airtime or data, Iya Hannah is sure Onyi has the precise code answer and from there, he became the help-line for Iya Hannah; giving her the needed and relevant codes so she can offer and fulfill customers request.
Beauty of harmonised USSD code in Nigeria by Remmy Nweke - ITREALMS

Was Pantami for telecom consumers?

Noteworthy is that towards the last quarter of 2019, especially on resumption of office, the current Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Isa Ali Pantami took it upon himself to kick against and even later formally commenced jettisoning plans by MNOs to introduce new charges for USSD, more so upon realisation that USSD is largely now being used by bank customers for financial transactions.