NCC Raises Hope on Service Quality, Blames Lack of Collaboration for Telecoms Vandalism

Eromosele Abiodun and Emma Okonji

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has assured telecoms subscribers of improved service quality across networks by December this year, following the 50 per cent hike in telecoms tariff that was approved by the NCC early this year.

The assurance is however contrary to the initial promise given by the telecoms operators that telecoms service would improve across networks after three months from the date of implementation of the 50 per cent hike in telecoms tariff, which took effect in March this year.

The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, who gave the renewed assurance during a media parley at the weekend in Lagos, said subscribers would begin to experience improved service quality after nine months from the March implementation date, which is from December this year.

According to Maida, operators have commenced investment in the areas of network expansion and network upgrades, and in few months time subscribers will begin to benefit from such investment.

Maida, however said lack of collaboration between telecoms operators and road contractors, was largely responsible for telecoms infrastructure vandalism, aside the vandalism caused by social miscreants that intentionally damage and steal telecoms facilities.   

He said such vandalism has led to poor service quality and in some cases, outright disconnection of telecoms services in the affected areas.

 “Operators have placed orders for telecoms equipment shipment and those equipments have started arriving as of June this year. And the commission is working very closely with the operators. We have bi-weekly calls with them to track progress of network upgrades and expansion.
“We started the network upgrade with the North-central, and Abuja, and it will soon be extended to Lagos and other parts of the country. We had to start from the North-central purely because of the scale of the work that needs to be done in those areas,” Maida said.

Worried about the massive destruction of telecoms facilities by road contractors and social miscreants, Maida said telecoms operators have been tasked to provide adequate security at telecoms sites.

“So we have revised the guidelines for security at all location sites and we issued them to the all location service providers and we gave them the timeline to comply.
So there must be basic requirements for security at sites, both from a technology perspective and also manpower perspective. First and foremost, we must do our own bits to secure our sites,” Maida said.

Maida also said the NCC signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Federal Ministry of Works and the Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, to protect telecoms infrastructure, in a bid to improve telecoms services across the country.