Nigeria - poor quality of service

NCC Disagrees With GSM Operators

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has faulted the claims by GSM operators that inadequate public power supply and security challenges are responsible for poor quality of service.

Throughout last year, Nigerians experienced poor quality of service, especially from GSM service, a situation which the operators attributed to inadequate power supply in the country.

But the executive vice chairman of the NCC, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, while playing host to the Senate Committee on Communications in Abuja, condemned the claim by the GSM operators that inadequate power supply was responsible for poor quality of GSM service.

According to Ndukwe, the causes of poor quality of service in Nigeria is the general network capacity inadequacies, careless sales promotions that encourage minutes of call without regard to capacity constraints.

Other general causes of poor quality of service, Ndukwe said include; delayed deployment of necessary switches, transmission, base transmission stations, and general shortage of experienced manpower within operating companies.

Speaking further on the issue, the NCC boss gave the remote causes of poor quality of service which include the failure of Nigerian Telecommunications Limited (NITEL) to deploy new networks as and when due and gradual collapse of existing NITEL transmission links due to privatsation which took place in 2005.

The EVC further pointed out that the refusal of Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) to allow NITEL deploy planned fiber-optic transmission in 2001 and 2002 also contributed to the poor quality of service Nigerians experience on their network.

In addition, Ndukwe stated that multiple regulation; especially in Lagos and Abuja are responsible for poor quality of service in the telecommunications sector.

The NCC boss explained that the Commission has directed the GSM operators to stop further promotion that could attract more subscribers to their network.