Nasiru Yusuf

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says it has taken actions to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the quality of service delivery by telecommunications networks.

Kano Focus reports that the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Umar Garba Danbatta disclosed this at the 1^st Virtual Telecom Consumer Parliament hosted by the commission in Abuja.

Mr Danbatta said the pandemic has caused as much as 800% demand hike in data usage and volume of calls for some operators.

He said that underlines the importance of ensuring quality of service delivery and quality of experience for telecoms consumers.

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He said the NCC in conjunction with the supervising Ministry developed e-platforms to handle all requests from the licensees to ensure that regulatory services are provided to sustain service delivery to subscribers.

He said the NCC also approved and encouraged resource sharing among network operators and secured Right of Passage for all telecommunications companies and suppliers for easy movement during the lockdown.

These measures according to him enabled the operators to service their base stations and ensured seamless services for telecom consumers who increasingly relied on the networks during the pandemic.

The EVC added that the NCC, working with the ministry is resolving the problem of high cost of Right of Way (RoW) with the Nigerian Governors Forum.

“The Commission is hopeful that with the reduction in RoW, which will automatically result in reduction in capital expenditure by the network operators, telecom companies will sooner than later reciprocate the gesture by making their services more affordable to Nigerians,” he said.

Mr Danbatta said regulatory efforts have also resulted in Presidential approval directing security agencies to protect ICT and telecom facilities as critical national assets.

He said this has helped to safeguard telecom infrastructure for the greater role telecom has to play with the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, Danbatta has strongly charged the service providers to constantly upgrade and expand their network capacity in order to deliver high quality of service to their consumers.

Panel highlights challenges

In his presentation, the Executive Commissioner, Stakeholder Management, Adeleke Adewolu showed the various Quality of Service indicators for the second quarter of the year across the networks and how the consumer Quality of Experience compared with the parameters based on the voice of the consumer survey conducted by the Commission.

Mr Adewolu highlighted the challenges facing operators, which impact negatively on quality of service to include fibre cuts, vandalism and theft of telecommunications site equipment.

A panel session of telecoms operators, who participated virtually in the TCP, was held and moderated by the Director, Consumer Affairs, NCC, Efosa Idehen.

The panel session addressed issues of network capacity upgrade, change in consumer data consumption behavior, implementation of agreed Consumer Complaints and Service Level Agreement (CC/SLA), consumer education as well as general issues around   quality of service and quality of experience by the over 192 million telecom consumers in the country.