Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah, has set up a Task Force within the Commission to address all issues concerning quality of services in the telecommunications network in the country.

Dr. Juwah who gave this indication during a courtesy visit in his office in Abuja mid last week by the Association of Telecom Operating companies of Nigeria, ALTON, led by Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, that the issue of addressing the Quality of Services, QoS, being rendered by the various networks is a matter of urgency to the Commission.

“The Commission will intensify efforts to ensure that the quality of services being delivered to the consumers is acceptable. We want the operators to continue to do only those things that will improve the quality of services and discontinue those that degrade the quality’, he told ALTON members made up of the operating companies including Zain, MTN, Globacom, Etisalat, Starcomms, Multilinks, Visafone, ZoomMobile among others.

The NCC boss said “in view of this, we have set up a Task Force within the Commission to come up with short, medium and long term solutions on the issues of QoS. In the course of their work, we will have reason to be interacting with the service providers at various levels and I want to use this opportunity to seek your cooperation in bringing a lasting solution to the issue of Quality of service in the various networks”. He said the Commission will soon meet with the CEO of the operating companies to address this issue among others.

He said in addition to the quality of service, the Commission will work towards ensuring that services on offer are affordable. “This is why we will encourage the operators to do more in offering services at affordable tariffs. We want to see more competition at play. We want to see costs of such services like Short Messaging Services, SMS, to coming lower than what the operators are offering today”, he said.

Dr. Juwah told ALTON members that the Commission will continue to encourage compliance to all regulations that will contribute to tariff reduction as well as continuing to foster competition by encouraging new entrants into the market at all times whenever possible.
“We also expect the operators to be responsive to their subscribers. Without the subscribers, no operator will exist and sustain their services so we want the operators to be very responsive to their complaints. On our part, we promise to be transparent, fair, firm, and forthright”, he said.

Reiterating his earlier resolve to be consultative of the industry, Dr. Juwah said he believes that wide industry consultations in the Commission’s activities will bring about effective and participatory regulatory process. “I also believe that consultative regulation of the industry will bolster the confidence of the stakeholders and engender a conducive environment necessary for further investments in the sector. So, it bears repeating in this occasion that we shall be consultative of the industry, especially members of ALTON who are very important stakeholders”, he said.

On SIM Card registration, Dr. Juwah that the Commission is currently consulting with different levels of government with a view to articulating the best approach to the registration of existing subscribers in the network while the service providers continue with the registration of new subscribers. “The Commission will soon make an appraisal of the progress made by the operating companies in registering the new subscribers”, he said.

Earlier in his address, President to ALTON, Engr. Gbenga Adebayo has requested the Commission to develop an incentive-driven bailout plan for some of our members with difficulties in payment of their regulatory dues for the sustenance of the industry growth and protection of ailing networks.

He said on the issue of Number portability, the association is working on the implementation of this and have submitted a number of position papers on same and will in due course forward our response to the implementation guidelines recently issued to members.
He particularly pointed out the issue of NESREA and EIA Audit Report of BTS as posing a lot of challenges to the operators as the agency now shuts down base stations in various parts of the country, thereby contributing to the problems associated with Quality of Service.
He said that indiscriminate interference and vandalisation and sabotage of sites,  prompts the association to request the classification of telecom infrastructure as National Security Infrastructure.

He reminded the Commission that Network operators in Nigeria are operating and maintaining four separate networks instead of one, due to the infrastructure and operational shortcomings of the Nigerian environment, listing such networks to include their core telecoms network, transmission, power supply, security and other ancillary services.
On policy support for the industry, Engr Adebayo called for active stakeholder engagement such as promotion of a genuine peer review mechanism between Operators and the Regulator to actively shape policy, legislative & regulatory frameworks.