The Chairman, Association
\nof Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr Gbenga Adebayo, last Tuesday said that the N606.4 billion compensation demanded by subscribers was uninformed.
\nAdebayo told journalists in Lagos, that the compensation was a misplaced request, adding that it was unfortunate that subscribers had to go to court over it.
\nSubscribers, under the auspices of the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS) had in July 2013 demanded for compensation for poor services being offered by the operators.
\nNATCOMS had given the operators a September 12, 2013 deadline, to compensate their customers with N5,000 each and at the expiration of the deadline, the subscribers took the operators to court.
\nFrom the \u2018Subscribers Data\u2019 released by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), active susbcribers on the telecoms operators\u2019 networks as at September 2013, stood at 121,271,218, multiplied by N5,000, would amount to N606.4 billion.
\nThe ALTON chairman said that the letter sent to the association by NATCOMS was badly intended and was just to arouse public sentiments.
\n\u201cIt appears to us that the association that sent the letter is not aware of the fundamentals of the industry they came to represent.
\n\u201cIf they are aware, I would not expect them to keep issues in the background and then come on behalf of their members to claim compensation.
\n\u201cWe are waiting, if it means going to court and I don\u2019t think it is reasonable to go that way,\u201d he said.
\nAccording to him, the fundamentals which NATCOMS has been advocating for and against are still there, hence there is no basis for demanding compensation.
\nHe said that NATCOMS and ALTON represented an industry, hence, it was unfortunate to have dragged the issue of quality of service this way.
\n\u201cMy hope is that it will not make the industry become a house divided against itself or make the industry engage in a naked dance in the marketplace,\u2019\u2019 the Information Technology (IT) expert said.
\nHe added that sanction, penalty or compensation would not eliminate the problems of quality of service; therefore, there was the need to address the issues.
\nOur correspondent reports that NATCOMS, had on\u00a0 October 10, filed a suit against the NCC, ALTON, MTN, Airtel, Globacom and Etisalat for poor quality services being rendered to subscribers.
\n\u201cIt is a case we will pursue to its logical conclusion. If possible, we will go to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr Gbenga Adebayo, last Tuesday said that the N606.4 billion compensation demanded by subscribers was uninformed. Adebayo told journalists in Lagos, that the compensation was a misplaced request, adding that it was unfortunate that subscribers had to go to court over it. Subscribers, under the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-icttelecom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=80459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=80459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=80459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=80459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}