The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Dr. Aminu Maida has disclosed the plans of the Commission to hold telecom service providers accountable for poor service delivery to customers.
Dr. Maida stated this during a breakfast meeting with some Reporters and Business Editors on Tuesday in Abuja.
He noted that there will be no proper regulation of the industry without enforcement, therefore, the telecom service providers would be held accountable in order to meet the minimal expectations of consumers.
“You are going to see a change in the way we make decisions, we are going to be very data-driven. All our decisions are going to be back up by data as much as possible. We want to reduce subjectiveness and take the right decisions that will improve the industry.
“When there is regulation without any consequences or enforcements on obligations you will agree with me that those obligations the chances of being met are very low. So as we drive towards delivering optimal quality of experience for our customers, we intend to hold our licensees accountable for all services, after all the consumers pay for the services and they expect the service to be at a certain level or point.
“Last week I spoke about compliance and enforcement but we will also first of all be collaborators, we will place a very high premium of collaboration with all critical stakeholders including yourselves to ensure that everybody is carried along in a cooperative process so that we can try to create win-win scenarios for everybody but of course if that is not possible all the licensees have an obligation and we will not shy to enforce for the clients”, he said.
Speaking further, Maida said, the Commission will focus on the critical Stakeholders, the consumers, the industry and the licencees to meet their expectations.
“The commission also will be driven by their recognition that we have primarily Three critical stakeholders in the industry these are: the consumers of telecom services, the industry and the licensees. And the top most are the Internet Service Providers (ISP’s), submarine landed cable companies, and all of the licensees of the commission. And last but not the least the government.
“What we recognize is that each of these stakeholders has a unique perspective and has different expectations. Our approach will thus be to walk towards the expectations of these stakeholders.
“For me the expectation of the consumer is very simple – quality of service. I don’t think you can say anything more than that quality of service and this quality of service we are talking about is a total consumer experience not just the drop call or I can’t make a call there is a total quality of experience right from how do you find and select the right network to use, how do you onboard onto that network talking about SIM registration process, process of linking your SIM to your NIN and of course, after you have gone through all of that when you are using it how easy is it for you to select a tariff, how transparent is the tariff, how are you supported by the entire host, how do you onboard from the network.”he added.
The EVC further disclosed that the Commission has resolved the issue between two major players and that the Commission will soon issue a statement to that effect.
‘The issues between two of the top big operators which hopefully sometime today or tomorrow we will be making a press release to let Nigerians and other stakeholders know that the two titans, thus we played the role of mediator and sat down between themselves and resolved their issues … happily.
“We are going to be putting in measures to ensure they don’t get to that stage again. And like I said we need to foster collaboration before we get to compliance and enforcement. And for our licensees the commission is committed to making life easier for them so we are going to be doing a lot of advocacy”, he said.
