Nasiru Yusuf

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has made history as the first telecoms regulator in West Africa to conduct a trial of the Fifth Grade (5G) technology.

In a statement sent to KANO FOCUS, the NCC said it conducted the 5G network trial in  three Nigerian cities comprising Abuja, Calabar and Lagos.

The commission assures that “the coming years can only be more exciting for Nigerians, who will, through 5G network deployment, have access to faster broadband speed to carry out personal and official activities, as this will bring about more efficiency, effectiveness and growth.”

Click this link to watch Video of NCC 5G Trial

Also Watch: NCC Promoting ICT Innovations for Economic Growth

Other achievements of the NCC, according to the statement are:

Protecting Nigerian lives through SIM registration 

The statement revealed that the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC was commended in 2019 for providing effective leadership to pave way for the implementation of the Emergency Communications Centre (ECC) project.

“The NCC has activated and increased the number of operational ECC to 17 states of the Federation and the Federal Capital (FCT), Abuja – 18 ECC in all. The list includes: the FCT, Benue, Kwara, Plateau, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Ogun, Ekiti, Ondo, Oyo, Edo, Akwa Ibom, Cross Rivers, Imo, Anambra, Enugu and Adamawa.

“Closely linked to the NCC’s efforts in implementing the ECC Project to boost Federal Government’s drive to promote security of lives and property, was also the Commission’s ongoing efforts towards sanitising the country’s SIM database for increased security in the country,” the statement read.

It added that in 2019, over 24 million invalidly-registered subscriber records were scrubbed (deduplicated) by the Commission via Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) in fulfilment of the mandate to establish a credible database of telephone subscribers.

“Subsequently, the commissioning of the National Emergency Toll-Free Number “112” and the Katsina State Emergency Communication Centre for the North West Zone was successfully carried out on September 23, 2019.

“Necessary preparations and arrangements are, however, ongoing towards ensuring successful launch/commissioning of such centres, including publicity and enlightenment in the remaining five (5) geopolitical zones and the FCT.

“The NCC under Dambatta was recognised as Nigeria’s goodwill Ambassador in security and emergency management as well as the award of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in security and emergency management.

“They received the awards earlier in December at the maiden Security and Emergency Management Awards hosted by the Emergency Digest, a publication of Image Merchants Promotion Limited, in conjunction with the Centre for Crisis Communication,” the NCC said.

Licensing of 10 VAS Aggregators

Following the development of its Value-Added Service (VAS) Aggregator Framework for the telecoms Value-Added Service (VAS) segment, the NCC, in 2019, awarded the VAS Aggregator licenses to 10 companies to provide aggregator services.

This will boost the competitiveness of the telecoms VAS segment of the telecommunications industry. It is also to unlock the huge potential of the telecoms VAS market, which has been estimated to be worth $500 million in the next few years.

The licensees are I-Cell Multimedia Limited, Nina-Jojer Limited, 21st Century Technologies Limited, Nitroswitch Limited, HML Consulting Limited, Iykejordan Limited, Cognys Systems Limited, Perpetual Communications Limited, Mobile Intelligence Limited and Aerandir Technologies Nigeria Limited.”

Regularising commercial satellites operations

In line with the relevant provisions of the Nigerian Communications Act (NAC), 2003, the NCC, in 2019, regularised the activities of all satellite operators including Space station operators as well as Earth Station operators; as well as issued Landing permits to Space Stations beaming signals over Nigerian territory.

“To this end, the NCC, in June, 2019, granted its first landing right permit (licence for satellite internet) to Avanti Communications Groups Plc, a United Kingdom-based satellite operator, for hosting of its HYLAS 4 Satellite specie segment over Nigerian territory.

“The landing permit, which is the first of its kind in satellite communications in Nigeria, implies authorisation that allows operators to beam its signal over the territorial integrity of a country.”

Improving quality of telecoms’ network service

In line with its continuous commitment to ensuring that telecoms operators deliver consistently improved QoS to their over 179 million subscribers, the NCC, in the course of 2019, embarked on a series of initiatives that have relatively helped in boosting the quality of service delivery across mobile networks.

Through continuous monitoring of operators’ compliance with the Key Performance Indicator (KPS) on Quality of service (QOS) on a state-by-state level, as against measuring operators’ compliance on a national average basis, the regulator helped to boost QoS delivery in this regards.

Increased consumer protection

Stepping up measures with respect of consumer complaints resolution was one initiative the Commission took very seriously in 2019.

For instance, the Commission revised its Consumer Complaints & Service Level Agreement (CC/SLA) to improve consumer complaint management and resolution in a more promptly manner by the service providers.

Similar efforts championed by the Danbatta-led NCC in the course of 2019 towards addressing consumer issues, was the inauguration of a multi-sectoral committee to combat the issue of financial frauds using telecoms or digital platforms.

More importantly, the thematic direction of the NCC’s Open Forum of the Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) for the of  fourth quarter of 2019 was targeted at addressing areas of protection for the consumers with respect to financial frauds committed by criminals using telecoms platforms.