Telecoms service providers and poor service delivery BY EMMAUNEL OYEBADE Nigeria has finally turned into a fertile ground where all manner of corrupt practices thrive, be it in government, business as well as other sector of the nation. One of such industries that appear to be beyond control of government and its regulatory agencies is the telecommunication. Apparently, GSM providers as well as data service providers in the country are having a swell time as they rip off the average Nigerian of his hard earned money who subscribes to their different services. The greed of extorting different subscribers without providing them with quality service delivery commensurate with the sums made from the massive subscribers has increased over time. The different telephone service providers (GSM & data) have apparently taken advantage of the seeming impotency of telephone regulator and as such increased their rip off. One logical conclusion that can be reached going by the quality of service delivery by major GSM provider is that of conspiracy to swindle unsuspecting subscribers. The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) in its 2014 report revealed that, it experienced unprecedented complaints from aggrieved subscribers between July and October with no fewer than 40,000 complaints received daily on the quality of service delivery. According to the report, subscribers major complaints were on loss of airtime, disappearance of data packages, dropped balance, unlawful activation of Value Added Tax (VAT), unexplained data depletion, unsolicited text messages, difficulty in accessing the internet despite the availability of data credit. However, rather than put in place punitive measures to deter these unscrupulous telephone providers, all the NCC did was to create a platform which is Telecoms Consumers Parliament (TCP) just for consumers to voice their pains without any plan to correct the anomaly and compensate the innocent subscribers who have been robbed of their credits The front-liners in this swindles are MTN, Etisalat, Airtel and Globacom, all of which switched roles in the statistics, of the NCC reports, showing the complaints received concerning their service delivery in percentage. For instance, as at July MTN and Etisalat were the biggest culprits with 41.7 percent complaints apiece, Globacom had 8.33 percent while Airtel had none While in August complaints against MTN rose from 41% to 63%, while Etisalat dropped from 41% to 9.1%, Globacom 9.1% while Airtel joined the depleting service delivery zone by having 9.1%. As at October, the complaints against MTN was pegged at 43%, Etisalat 14.3%, Airtel 21.4% and Globacom 14.3% NCC Director General, Dr. Eugene Juwah has so far demonstrated that it is a toothless bulldog, since little or nothing has been done to sanction the service providers that on a daily basis rip off their subscribers. The impotence and the inability of NCC to sanction these erring GSM providers, perhaps, have emboldened them to continue the swindle atrocities since NCC itself has come out to say that major GSM providers were ignoring its directives to stop promotional swindles and poor services. This among others has encouraged all manner of malfeasance hurting the economy and innocent subscribers, and as such, subscribers have appeared helpless as NCC has failed to use any of the major GSM providers as a scapegoat to deter others. It is important to stress that the NCC must henceforth introduce practicable policy, which will forbid operators from assaulting subscribers with unsolicited promos and lotteries. Perhaps, government needs to treat as a matter of urgency the need to license more GSM operators to increase competition.
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 08:10:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015