Senate vows to sanction erring telecoms providers

Senate yesterday resolved to henceforth protect Nigerians against imperialist tendencies of telecommunication providers, who swindle them for services not provided.

The lawmakers vowed to even stop any telecoms providers found to be shortchanging innocent Nigerian from operating in the nation’s telecommunications space.

They stated this resolve while debating a motion on The Increasing Rate of Drop Calls and other Unwholesome Practices by Telecommunications Network Operators in Nigeria that have Continued to Rob Nigerians of their Money, sponsored by Senator Buhari Abdulfatai (Oyo North) and 34 others.

The senators strongly condemned the inefficiency of GSM network providers in the country resulting in poor service delivery.
They urge the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) to invoke the appropriate provisions of the Law and other extant agreements to protect consumers where necessary and to refund them for disrupted calls caused by network issues.“Consumers should be allowed to have more control over their usage of data bundles as it is done by telecoms operators in countries like Kenya (Safaricom) and South Africa.

The lawmakers urged NCC, Consumer Protection Council (CPC), Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and other regulatory agencies to effectively supervise the telecoms service providers to ensure regulatory compliance, operational efficiency and exceptional service delivery.

Senate further directed NCC and other relevant agencies to carry out thorough investigation of the causes of dropped calls in the GSM networks and come up with innovation that would improve customer experience.It also directed its Communications and Trade Committee, when constituted, to further look into the issues raised in the motion.

Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, who spoke on the frustration being expressed by his colleagues said, “I have listened to the frustrations of some of our colleagues that we can only bark, but we can’t bite, but we are going to bark and bite this time around.

“We will definitely do the right thing, even if it requires blacklisting an operator, we will go for that, with this I think it will be an effort in the right direction by the Senate to protect Nigerians, that is why we are here.”

While moving the motion, Abdulfatai had stated that all the GSM operators in in the country have recently been experiencing terrible congestions on their networks, thus denying subscribers the benefit of getting value for their money and hampering their ability to make or receive calls successfully.