Interconnect debt: NCC reassures telecoms consumers of protection
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has reassured the over 174 million telecoms consumers of protection from any service disruption from the ongoing regulatory intervention in resolving the rising interconnectivity debts among telecoms operators in the country.
The commission also called on debtor operators to settle interconnect debts owed their creditor networks without further delay to prevent possible revenue drop and customer flight from their networks to competitors.
Voice network has been very bad in the last few days due to infighting among the four dominant telecom operators as a result of interconnect debt.
Daily Trust learnt yesterday that the operators were owing themselves billions of naira in interconnect debts.
But the Executive Vice Chairman of the commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, said in Abuja yesterday that as a consumer-centric telecoms regulatory authority, the NCC was keen on ensuring that consumers continued to enjoy uninterrupted service.
He also said efforts were being made to address the issue of indebtedness in the industry.
Prof Danbatta said interconnection is a matter that the commission was handling within regulatory provisions to protect consumers by ensuring that their quality of experience (QoE) is not acutely affected.
The EVC said while regulatory approval on permission for disconnection was granted to creditor networks late last year, as a last resort towards resolving the huge interconnection debts threatening the health and sustainability of the industry, the commission is ensuring that no telecoms subscriber is disconnected.
“Though the commission granted approval to MTN’s request to disconnect debtor networks from its network in line with Section 100 of the Nigerian Communications Act (NCA) 2003, the Guidelines on Procedure for Granting Approval to Disconnect Telecommunications Operators, 2012 and other regulatory instruments, what is happening now is that the creditor networks are restricting certain services to their debtor networks in form of one-way disconnection.
“It is one-way disconnection because, as a regulator, we prevented total disconnection; not doing that would be frustrating for the consumers. So, we have ensured that subscribers on the affected debtor networks are able to receive calls and text messages from creditor networks.
“This means they might not be able to make seamless calls or send text messages to the creditor’s network at all times because of restriction of access to debtor networks, pending when satisfactory payment plans are reached with respect to the interconnect indebtedness.
“This is to prevent further accumulation of interconnect debt by the debtor networks,” he said.