MTN Nigeria, Airtel, and other telecommunications services providers under the aegis of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) may be left with no other option than to increase their call and data tariffs.
According to the Chairman of ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, who made this disclosure, MTN, and the other telcos may review their tariffs should the alarming prices of diesel be sustained.
In an interview where he made this known, Adebayo lamented the current reality in the energy sector of the country, saying the hike in diesel and the scarcity of the products have negatively impacted the telcos.
His words: “It is already impacting us and very significantly so. We are one of the industries that have the highest consumption of diesel across the country.
“Our need is not just in the major cities; it is all across the country. Diesel is required in all the places that require services. We are already significantly impacted. And it is not just about the high costs, it is also about availability. Suppliers are beginning to find it difficult to supply the commodity because of scarcity.
“When they find, costs of haulage have gone up. The cost of procurement of the diesel itself has gone up significantly. We are actually in a very bad situation. And how this will play in end-user pricing requires us to follow the right channel, the regulatory procedure for conveying our complaint to the regulator.”
According to the ALTON chief, while the telcos would continue to ensure that there are no service disruptions as a result of the diesel issues, they may have to review their tariffs to match up the reality.
The diesel situation is a problem at this time. We are doing all that we can to ensure the business continues as usual in all cases and other every circumstance. The assurance for the public is that there would not be a time of outage because of the current diesel crisis. What I cannot assure is that at some point there may not be a consideration for some form of tariff review.
“I cannot guarantee that it will not happen sometime in the near future. I cannot guarantee that. But as it stands today, I will reassure the public that there would be continuous service at all times.
“We will continue to solve the problem to the best of our ability. We certainly need to approach the government for some intervention at some point. We are where we are. All that we are doing at this time is to ensure there are no disruptions to service,” he added.
Diesel scarcity is not only affecting Nigerian telcos, other industries like aviation are suffering from the adverse effect of it.
