By Emma Okonji
Despite a threat by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to stop the sale of SIM cards of telecoms operators by the end of November 2011, should they fail to improve on service quality, network quality still remains poor around the country.
NCC had last month, flayed MTN, Globacom and Airtel over poor quality of service from their networks and threatened to stop the three major mobile operators from further sale of SIM cards by the end of November this year, if they fail to meet with the key performance indicators (KPI) set by the NCC to improve quality of service.
Going by the threat from the telecoms regulatory body, industry stakeholders thought the telecom operators would swing into action to deploy all machinery, including technical staff, to various telecom sites to fix every identifiable problem, in order to address the issue of poor quality of service.
However, THISDAY checks revealed that such was not the case, as telecom subscribers groaned under poor quality of service at the weekend.
Globacom subscribers were unable to recharge their phones through the normal recharge cards, and they were unable to make successful calls. Some subscribers, who were able to make few minutes call, discovered that their accounts were not debited.
For MTN and Airtel, their subscribers suffered poor data services, as there were disruptions in the networks’ data services, resulting in subscribers’ inability to browse the internet using their mobile phones.
However, all three operators have publicly apologised to subscribers and promised to fix the problems.
A text message from Globacom to its subscribers read: “Dear customers, due to system upgrade of the recharge application, you may not be able to recharge your account using recharge cards for the next 24 hours. Please make payments at Glo World outlets, ATM or ETB branch. We apologise for the inconvenience caused.’
On November 5, Airtel also sent an apology text to its Blackberry subscribers, which read: “Dear valued customers, we apologise for the Blackberry service downtime experienced recently. Normal service has been restored. Thank you for understanding.”
On November 1, MTN also apologised to its internet users for internet service outage. According to MTN’s Corporate Services Executive, Akinwale Goodluck, the disruption in the network’s internet service was due to technical challenges from one of the company’s third party service providers.
“The disruption was as a result of submarine cable failure which caused challenges with internet access and slow speed. Unfortunately some of our customers have been affected. We have however successfully migrated to another provider and we expect gradual improvements across board,” he added.
Although Etisalat was spared by NCC for probably scaling through the NCC’s KPI test, analysts believe the company should not rest on its oars, but make frantic efforts to maintain the same high service quality it started with, when it rolled out its services on October 23, 2008.
Asked to assess the current performances of network operators after the threat message to operators last month, Head, Media and Public Relations for NCC, Mr. Reuben Muoka, said it would be too early to give such assessment.
He insisted that NCC meant every word applied in the warning letter it handed over to the three operators, and that at the end of November, it would assess their networks again with the set KPI, and that any operator whose service falls below the KPI standard would be sanctioned accordingly.
C.Thisday
