Airtel,Glo,MTN Pays N647.5m Fine Over Poor Services

The three leading telecoms operators, MTN Nigeria Communications Limited, Globacom Limited and Airtel Nigeria Limited, at the weekend, met the payment deadline of N647.5 million fine imposed on them by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) for poor service quality on their networks.

When contacted on phone, Public Relations Manager at NCC, Mr. Reuben Muoka, who confirmed the payment, said: “As at close of work on Friday, the NCC received payment of N647.5 million, being payment for the fine imposed on operators for poor service quality.”

NCC had, on February 24, fined MTN, Globacom and Airtel, a total of N647.5 million for failure to meet  the commission’s key performance indicator (KPI) standards for the month of January and directed them to pay by March 7 or risk payment of additional N2.5 million daily as long as the contravention lasts.
Details of the fine showed that Airtel and MTN were fined N185 million each, while Globacom was fined N277.5 million.

The letters, which communicated the sanction to the three operators were signed by the Executive Vice Chairman of the commission, Dr. Eugene Juwah.
NCC also banned the three operators from sale of SIM cards on their networks for a month effective March 1.

In the letters, the commission stated that  it would carry out an audit of the three companies on March 1, and also on March 31, to ensure that no sale of new SIM cards was done by the three networks within the period.

Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, said that the continuous fine by NCC would not solve the challenge of poor service quality as currently being witnessed by subscribers, but would rather aggravate the situation.

According to him, “The operators decided to play the role of the obedient students to their teacher, since the fine was paid out of bitterness and pain, and I pray that it will not get to a level where the subscribers will begin to fight the operators for depriving them of what belongs to them.”

He warned that if NCC continued the way it was going, then the imposition of fine would be an endless approach, since the regulator was not interested in addressing the issues that were giving rise to poor service quality in the country.

Operators had complained bitterly over the continued fine imposed on them by NCC, and called on the commission to address the real challenges facing the operators, rather than imposing fines, based on parameters of its KPI standards.
MTN has however said barring them from sale of SIM cards would not improve quality of service.

MTN Corporate Service Executive, Mr. Wale Goodluck, who pointed this out at the presentation of its 2013 Financial Results and Statement, argued that while the one-month ban would not also impact the market share of the three operators, it would punish their distributors, who make a living from SIM sale.

Goodluck said with the proposed rebasing of the gross domestic product (GDP), the contribution of the telecoms industry to the economy would be between 15 and 20 per cent .

Reeling out the figures, Goodluck disclosed that it recorded N793.614 billion as revenue as at December 2013, representing 5.31 per cent increase from N753.578 billion in 2012.

He pointed out that it incurred a total of N260.572 billion as operating expenditure, out of which 12 per cent or N31.2 billion represented the cost of diesel. According to him, the huge amount of money MTN spent on cost of diesel would have built 5,200 90-square-metres base stations.