CPC Wants Compensation For Telecom Subscribers

The Consumer Protection Council (CPC) has described consumer violations in Nigeria’s telecom sector as intolerable and requested that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) draws out a special compensation plan to take care of poor quality of service being experienced by the Nigerian telecom consumers.

Speaking in Abuja during a courtesy visit to the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, CPC’s Director General, Mrs. Dupe Atoki outlined the violations of consumer rights by the mobile network operators to include poor quality of service-especially high rate of drop calls and unsolicited text messages, even at odd hours.

Other concerns, she said, included disruption of internet service without prior notice to consumers; lack of compensation for down times; unfavourable data roll-over terms; non-provision of detailed billing information on used data; unfavourable customer care centres; ineffective customer care lines; and non-transparent sales promotion terms and conditions.

Other infractions include unauthorised conscription of consumers into some telecom services or packages, especially caller tunes, without easy opting out options. She said the identified breaches required “immediate regulatory attention”.

The CPC boss, while stressing the need to step up collaboration between the two Agencies to address some of the consumers’ concerns, noted that despite NCC directives on unsolicited SMS, operators still indulged in the practice of sending these messages at odd hours, thereby infringing on the rights of individuals for a decent rest.

She disclosed that the purpose of the Council’s visit was to intimate the NCC’s boss of her organisation’s imminent full-scale investigation into the telecom sector, noting that a strengthened relationship would enhance the protection of telecom subscribers in the country.

Responding, the NCC Vice Chairman, Prof. Umaru  Danbata, said the poor telecom service being experienced by subscribers were  due to two major factors, which he described as technical and non-technical.

According to him, while the commission has the expertise to address the technical issues, the non-technical issues which are down to paucity of supporting infrastructure, can only be addressed by the three tiers of government.

He said, “You have touched on very important subject that the commission is striving very hard to ensure improvement on and that is the quality of service. In wanting to conduct your investigation, you will seriously be handicapped because of the way we measure quality of service here.

“This is one of the regulatory things we do and we have established expertise doing this over the years to the extent that regulators over the continent of Africa come here in order to bring to bear the best practice that we have here in regulating their own sector. You spoke about dropped calls; I think the parameters that characterize quality of service are divided into two. One is made of technical parameters which only NCC has the capacity to measure, appraise and give directive to operators to improve in the event these parameters fall below stipulated level. It is hard see any role CPC can play in the determination of these parameters.”

He, however agreed on the need for partnership between the two agencies, saying it was through that the interest of consumers, which both the agencies were protecting, could be effectively actualized.

He thereafter suggested for the formation of a joint committee which would look into some of the issues of common interest, particularly the review of the existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the two organisations, which the CPC boss agreed to.