NCC's riot act on Quality of Service, writes CBN on forex

ITRealms:

Concerned by the degenerating Quality of Service (QoS) provided by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) and other service providers, lately in the country, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has read a riot act on QoS, reports ITRealms.

This, ITRealms gathered was largely as part of measures to cushion the situation and ameliorate the recurrent inaccessibility to foreign exchange (forex) by operators.

The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta made this disclosure in audience with the MNOs, on Monday, that the Commission had written to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele and he was favourably disposed to addressing the forex needs of the operators.

As a follow up to the letter, the Executive Commissioner (Stakeholders Management), NCC, Mr. Sunday Dare had a meeting with Mr. Emefiele and extracted a commitment from him on how he hoped to address the forex needs of the operators.

Danbatta spoke in Abuja during an interactive session on Quality of Service delivery which NCC management had with operators, stressing that 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 consumer has to be treated with dignity. The 8-point agenda drives this point home” he declared.

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.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

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12 Sins of Mobile Operators in Nigeria in 12 years

How time flies, just 12 years ago, the telecommunications subscribers cum consumers have groaned in pains as a result of poor quality service of the telecommunications operating companies, so says the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS).

According to NATCOMS president, Deolu Ogunbanjo, in a 12 Sins of Mobile Operators in Nigeria as listed in his letter to the operators through the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) seeking compensation, he justified their demands, arguing that the N5000 per subscriber as compensation for poor quality of service in the next 12 years, should be free to be used across networks.

Some of the sins of mobile operators based on deficiencies, he told ITRealms, include:

"1. Dialing a number between 5-10 times before getting connected /not-connected

2. Dialing several times and still getting a ‘call failed’ message.

3. Moving from one place to the other in search of network signal before receiving or making calls

4. When you dial and eventually connected, you will be a lucky subscriber if both caller and recipient can hear each other without voice-breaks. Often times, the caller /recipient may hear the recipient /caller, while the caller /recipient cannot hear. Yet this incomplete call is paid for.

5. Sometimes when both of you are connected and you can hear each other, after talking for few minutes, one of you will not hear the other again. The call has been terminated by one of the networks.

6. When you have tried to call through voice to no avail, you want to try the SMS (Text Massage) alternative. After typing your SMS and trying to send, it may not sail through, even after several trials as it gives the usual ‘message sending failed’ on the screen. You must keep trying even if it takes 15-30 minutes before a successful attempt.

7. When your Text Message (SMS) is successfully sent, and the message is not delivered, the Subscriber is still charged.

8. When your mobile-phone credit gets exhausted and you try to recharge in order to make an urgent call, you may not be able to recharge no matter how many times you try at that particular time.

9. Sometimes, when you successfully recharge your phone either for voice calls or data /internet browsing and the network operator mistakenly remove Subscriber’s credit, and thereafter, Subscriber complains through operator’s customer care line or goes physically to operator’s customer care office, they deliberately keep posting Subscribers and not actually resolving the complaint. And in view of the small amounts usually involved, the Subscriber does not seek for compensation, even when he tries, the customer-care officer is trained to tell stories that will eventually frustrate the Subscriber.

10. When trying to complain to customer-care of a network problem or over-scratched recharge card with some pin numbers not showing, they will either direct you to their website or keep you waiting for between 30 minutes to 1-hour. If you are lucky to get attention and you are eventually attended to, it takes 3-6 months before crediting the subscriber, after taking the details.

11. When the Subscriber complains through network operator’s customer care line, he /she will be told that it will be resolved in few numbers of days to no avail. Even when the Subscriber physically goes to the Customer Care Centre of the network operator, it is also promises of resolution to no avail. Only 1 or 2 of every 100 cases are resolved satisfactorily.

12. When the operators run their promotions for profit motives, they deliberately congest the network to the detriment of good service quality which affects Subscribers."

Therefore, Ogunbanjo insisted that Nigerian telecom subscribers deserve to be compensated.

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Alliance urges Senate to make telecom infrastructure critical resource

At the just concluded two-day public hearing on Communications by a Senate Committee in Abuja, with a call by ICT Publishers Alliance for the institutionalization of telecommunications infrastructure as critical national resource.

Chairman of the group, Mr. Aaron Ukodie, said telecom services should be considered as strategic national services so as to free it from the debilitating effect of multiple taxation and regulation from various government agencies at the three tiers of government.

He said that the Alliance in a 24-page presentation to the Senate Committee on Communications public hearing, on problems associated with quality of service in mobile phone operations in Nigeria and co-location, stated that

The Committee chaired by Gilbert Nnaji, he said, held the session for two days and took both oral and paper presentations from stakeholders in the telecom industry.

The perception today among different strata of government, the group noted, is that telecom operators are cash-cows therefore should be milked to no end such that taxations at even council levels are notoriously and arbitrarily imposed in such a way as to make continuous or seamless service delivery impossible.

Mr. Ukodie pointed out that this year alone, the NCC has had to intervene in several locations where telecom infrastructure like base stations were shut by council officials enforcing compliance with imposed taxes by local councils.

“Although cases of multiple regulation and taxation may not be limited to Nigeria alone; our position is that Nigeria can eliminate such cases and become an example to other countries and regions,” he declared in a press statement made available to ITRealms.

According to the group, it is the responsibility of lawmakers, as the repository of the people's destinies, to ensure that laws made do not run counter to the needs, desires and social wellbeing of the people they represent.

Therefore, the Alliance noted that a situation where every agency of government taxes telecom just because they see the industry as the cash-cow, does not and will not augur well for the fledgling telecom industry.

“All of a sudden, for instance, every state government, every local government, and every community has become a law maker unto themselves, churning out one law after another nearly every month or quarter of the year, all targeted at milking telecom operators,” he decried.

The group emphasised that the National Assembly is required to put all these in check, if the telecom industry, especially mobile operators are to continuously grow and deliver quality services to the people.

Maintaining that the recent gazetting of the Quality of Service Regulations by the Federal Ministry of Justice is a right step in the right direction to strengthen the NCC to take some severe measures when service providers are found wanting and that the NCC must also sustain its efforts in the engagement of Drive-Test contractors to carry out continuous quality of service drive-testing in the six geo-political zones and Lagos.

PR

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