Nigeria - improving GSM quality of service

Nigeria: NCC Restates Calls for More Base Stations

As Nigerians continue to grapple with poor quality of service in the nations telecoms industry, the Nigerian Communications Commission, (NCC) has restated its earlier call for more base stations to be procured by telecoms operators in the country to address ongoing challenges of Quality of Service (QoS) in the sector.

This call was part of the agreement following the second public forum on QoS held recently in Abuja.

In a communiqué issued after the forum which was made available to THISDAY participants called on operators to fast track their pace of deployment of base stations and transmission capacities because of the urgent need to resolve the QoS challenges.

Besides, on the issue of inadequacy of power , which was identified as militating against effective quality of service in the nation, the communiqué also counselled all telecoms stakeholders to engage relevant public institutions and agencies in the power sector to accelerate ongoing reforms in the sector, so as to improve power supply in the country.

It added that all telecom operators should be mandated to produce and publish their consumer codes of practice and service level agreements to the consumers of telecommunications services as soon as possible.

The communiqué also urged the Federal Government through its relevant agencies, to provide incentives to operators who are interested in deploying land line infrastructures to complement the dominant mobile phone services. This will no doubt help spread the issue of service as Nigeria has over 97% of its subscribers on the mobile platform. The communiqué also called for a collaboration between the Nigerian Communications Commission and telecom operators in Nigeria to seek ways to make services more accessible to the physically challenged. It stated that there was a need also for operators to increase current resources available for their corporate social responsibility projects and programmes in Nigeria.

It also went further, urging operators to improve on the management of their customer care centres, including options of outsourcing of such facilities to make them more widely available and effective.

Another area that the forum believes will help ameliorate poor quality of service is for collaboration between operators, the Nigerian Police, and their host communities, in the provision of security services to their telecom facilities , to stop incidences of vandalism. Calling on the forum to be held more regularly to address issues that impede effective quality service, the communique urged telecom consumers to make the right choice for the kind of services that suit their telephone needs with respect to tariffs, quality of service and type of service.

It will be recalled that the idea for the quality of service forum was first mooted last year during the heat of poor service in the industry. The objectives of the forum was to appraise the current QoS situation and the impact of measures taken by operators since the last forum in June, 2007. It was also targeted at identifying current QoS challenges and proffer lasting solutions as well as bring together stakeholders to address the QoS challenges.

Presentations were made by the Minister of State for Information and Communications, representative of the National Assembly, the Nigerian Communications Commission, the Nigerian Police, the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission, NERC, three GSM operators, two consumer advocacy groups, the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria, ALTON, QoS Working Group, and a presentation invited from the public.

The forum identified critical issues affecting the current challenges to include, but not limited to: Network congestion,limited Transmission Infrastructure/Capacities, inadequate public power supply, security challenges facing telecoms infrastructures and community relations issues. The QoS Working Group, comprising of representatives of NCC, the service providers, ALTON, Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria, ATCON, consumer advocacy groups and other interested stakeholders, set up in 2007 to critically examine the issues confronting QoS in the country, presented an interim report in its report laid down recommendations will be published in due course.

The Forum proposed and presented a new set of Key Performance Indicators, KPIs, for the Nigerian telecommunications industry. The forum was informed that the usual process of public consultation and feedback will be followed before final determination and publication of the new KPIs for the industry. At the forum , MTN, Globacom and Celtel, the major GSM operators in the country all made presentations informing the forum of the measures they have so far taken since the last forum in 2007, in addressing QoS.