Telecoms operators seek four-week grace before deactivating defective SIMs

CONCERNED about challenges being faced by subscribers under the current re-registration exercise, telecommunications operators have applied to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for four-week grace before deactivating any defective Subscribers Identification Module (SIMs) found on their networks.

The operators under the aegis of the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) said it was particularly concerned about subscribers whose registration records have been classified as invalid files and rejected by the commission.

The operators stressed that invalid files formed the majority of rejected SIM registration records and rejection was typically as a result of formatting errors or duplication of numbers rather than specific non-conformance of any registration data.

An industry source, who spoke to The Guardian on the matter, however, revealed that these set of errors are relatively easy to correct by reformatting and regenerating the data, without involvement of the affected subscriber, “therefore, for subscribers with invalid records, immediately deactivating their lines upon rejection of their registration data by the commission will result in considerable, yet avoidable, discomfort for a huge number of statistics, who have no role to play in resolving the issues with their records.”

ALTON Chairman, Gbenga Adebayo, who confirmed to The Guardian that operators have appealed to NCC for possible time extension for any faulty SIM cards before deactivation; said operators have continued to develop capabilities for correcting errors in a manner that minimizes discomfort to the affected subscribers.

Adebayo said operators might, on their own initiative, address errors in SIM registration data, which do not materially, affected the accuracy of data collected.

This, according to him, included errors such as duplicated textual data and dates entered in the wrong format that can be corrected without the subscriber experiencing the negative experience associated with deactivation.