FG may prosecute telecoms firms for poor services

The Federal Government has threatened to prosecute telecommunication service providers who continue to render poor quality services to subscribers after December 31, 2013.The plan to prosecute errant telecoms operators was unfolded in Lagos on Monday at a joint newsbriefing addressed by the Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson; Director-General, Consumer Protection Council, Mrs. Dupe Atoki; and Executive Vice Chairman, Nigerian Communications Commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah.Atoki said the errant operators risked prosecutionand jail terms of up to five years if ongoing investigations revealed that they had deliberately short-changed Nigerians through poor service delivery.“The CPC can make orders in the interest and protection of consumers, and disobedience is also criminalised by law. While the NCC can impose fines on an offending operator, the CPC can, in addition, commit such recalcitrant offender to jail term for contravening any consumer protection enactment,” she explained.Atoki said the challenge of doing business in the country was the usual justification by the service providers for the violation of consumer rights, but noted that as far as the CPC was concerned and as long as a business was in operation and consumers were paying for its service or product, the consumers must get value for their money.“Under the Consumer Protection Council Act, the CPC has the power to sanction, prosecute and compel any product or service provider to answera lawful inquiry, disobedience of which is criminalised,” she said.Earlier, Johnson had said that despite the fact that her ministry had been working hard to provide an enabling environment for the deployment of Information Communication Technology infrastructure like base stations and fibre optic cables, the poor quality of service persisted.According to the minister, subscribers are daily faced with poor network service delivery that makes it impossible for them to receive calls, while also experiencing drop calls and lack of sustainability of calls, unsolicited text messages at odd hours, unsolicited telemarketing calls, deceptive broadband speed adverts by some service providers and failure of service delivery without compensation to consumers.Others are insufficient customer care lines, unrelenting sales promotion despite poor network service delivery, non-compensation to consumers for loss of airtime and poor service delivery, network insecurities characterised by uncontrollable interruptions on networks by unidentifiable third parties.The operators have in the last few years listed the challenges confronting and limiting their ability to deliver effective quality services as multiple regulation and taxation; illegal access denials and site shut-outs; inadequate power supply; lack of incentives to drive service penetration to remote and rural areas; rent seeking charges for permits and approvals necessary for deployment;and insecurity, among others.Johnson, however, said her ministry and the Works ministry had developed new Right of Way guidelines for Federal Government roads to enable the operators to have unencumbered means of laying fibre optics, which is critical for infrastructure development and quality of service.To remove arbitrary charges and eradicate multiple taxation that impede telecoms development across the nation, she said for the first time in the history of Nigeria’s telecoms revolution, her ministry had got state governors and relevant authorities at the state and federal levels to address the issue and adopt measures toremove arbitrary charges in order to enhance service delivery across the nation.She said, “At a meeting behind closed doors  with Governor Babatunde Fashola last week, the ministry facilitated a landmark agreement to remove constraints to the installation, rollout and deployment of base stations and fibre optic cables in the state. The Lagos State Government at the meeting agreed to reduce taxes and levies by over 40 per cent and Right of Way fee was reduced from N3,000 to N500, a reduction of over 85 per cent.“We are concerned that the poor quality issues still abound.  I am inundated with complaints about quality of service and the seemingly uncaring attitude of our telecoms operators to resolve these issues on a regular basis. We will continue, through the industry regulator, to apply sanctions when operators fail to meet the required standards in terms of service quality breaches.“However, consumers cannot continue to bear theburden of poor service delivery. Though we are mindful that the operators are facing issues in deploying or maintaining infrastructure, we believe that the operators can do better in delivering acceptable quality of service, which they are clearly not doing now.”

Copyright PUNCH.