Nigeria - compensation for poor QoS

Nigeria: Compensation - Court Strikes Out GSM Operators' Suit

A Federal High Court yesterday struck out the suit brought by two GSM operators, MTN and Celtel, to evade payment of compensation to subscribers over poor quality service, imposed on them by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

The Court, sitting in Lagos, struck out the case for lack of merit and insufficient grounds. The two operators had last year, requested for an interlocutory injunction to restrain

NCC from implementing its earlier direction mandating the operators to pay compensation to subscribers for poor quality of service.

Justice D. Abutu of Court three, Federal High Court, in his judgment, reiterated that the Plaintiffs/Applicants had not shown special circumstances to grant the relief sought from the court, and therefore, dismissed the motion.

The Commission, which recently directed the two operators to pay N175 per subscriber for the month ended January 2008, for not meeting key performance indicators on quality of service as set by the regulator, had on January 9, 2008, won the case earlier instituted against it by MTN and Celtel, protesting notices on payment of the compensation to subscribers issued to them on September 19 and 20, 2007.

Following the ruling of the court in favour of the NCC, the Commission on February 28, 2008, finally issued a direction to both operators to pay compensation of N175.00 per subscriber for the month ended January 31, 2008.

The Commission reiterated that it arrived at the determination for compensation, because the two operators failed to meet the requirement to achieve Traffic Channel Congestion (TCH), below 10 per cent levels for the month of January 2008, in line with the Key Performance Indicators published by it, and issued to the operators late last year.