Poor service: NATCOMS insists N647m fine paid by telcos belongs to subscribers

NATCOMS president Deolu Ogunbanjo told Daily Trust that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has no right to collect the fine since the subscribers were the ones that bore the brunt of poor services rendered by the operators because of which they (operators) were fined.Ogunbanjo said though the suit seeking to stop NCC from collecting the […]

NATCOMS president Deolu Ogunbanjo told Daily Trust that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has no right to collect the fine since the subscribers were the ones that bore the brunt of poor services rendered by the operators because of which they (operators) were fined.
Ogunbanjo said though the suit seeking to stop NCC from collecting the fine filed by his association would be heard at Federal High Court Lagos today, NATCOMS is embarking on vigorous enlightenment campaign to make subscribers demand for their right to collect the fine instead of NCC.  
But NCC’s Director of Public Affairs Tony Ojobo said in Abuja that making telcos to cough out “huge sum of money as fine to be paid to government is the only way the operators could feel the impact of such fine.”
He said “if we told them (operators) to share N647m to subscribers they would do that quickly by giving each subscriber an airtime of say about N15; and this would not make them sit up to offer good services.”
MTN, Glo and Airtel were fined in February for poor services they provided between July 2013 and January 2014.
Details of the fine showed that MTN and Airtel were ordered to pay N185m each, while Globacom paid N277, 500.
NCC said Airtel failed on Call Setup Rate (CSSR) while MTN and Glo failed on CSSR and Drop Call Rate (DCR).