Business
NATCOMS Tasks NCC On N1.17bn Fine
The National Association of
Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS), has appealed to the NCC to use the
N1.17 billion fine imposed on some GSM operators to compensate subscribers.
The
president of the association, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, made the
suggestion in an interview with newsmen in Lagos recently.
He said that subscribers bore the brunt of
the poor services rendered by the operators.
According to him, subscribers are the
worst hit by the poor services of the GSM operators and they should, therefore,
be compensated.
He said that NCC, as the telecoms
regulator, had the responsibility to ensure that users of the
telecoms services were not exploited.
Ogunbanjo said that the fine imposed on
operators would let them know that Nigerians could no longer tolerate poor
services.
“The fine must be passed on to
subscribers according to their volume of calls and usage of the Internet,’’ he
said.
“The regulator should rather compel
operators that were fined to provide free services to compensate for their
regular poor services.
“When the blackberry service messed up for
about four days sometimes last year, the operator did not wait for NCC to slam
them.
“The blackberry company had the decency to
extend everybody’s subscription for about four days as compensation, but our
own GSM operators are not like that.
“Telecoms operators should be made to
provide free services for one week without service interruption,’’ the NATCOMS
boss said.
It would b recalled that MTN, Etisalat,
Airtel and Globacom were panalised by the NCC for poor services rendered to
subscribers in March and April.
They were ordered to pay N1.17
billion as fines with MTN expected to pay N360 million, Etisalat N360 million,
Airtel N270 million, and Globacom, N180 million, respectively.