NCC writes CBN over forex for telecoms

Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) said it had written to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to make foreign exchange available to the telecoms operating companies in the country.

The Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta disclosed this Monday in Abuja during an interactive session on Quality of Service delivery which NCC management had with operators.

He said the CBN governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele was favourably disposed to addressing the forex needs of the operators

As a follow up to the letter, the Executive Commissioner (Stakeholders Management), NCC, Mr. Sunday Dare had a meeting with Mr. Emefiele and extracted a commitment from him on how he hoped to address the forex needs of the operators, he said.

Danbatta said, since the NCC had declared 2017 as the year of the consumer, all hands should be on deck for telecom consumers to have a fresh lease to high Quality of Service. “The consumer has to be treated with dignity” Danbatta added, saying the “8-point agenda drives this point home”.

The NCC, he explained, has put measures in place to check and monitor Quality of Service (QoS) on various networks “and we have sent this report to our task force on QoS and have been interacting with governments at different levels as part of the measures to deal with the poor QoS”.

Danbatta admonished the operators and co-location service operators to provide suggestions on how to address the situation.

NCC’s Head, Quality of Service Unit, Engr. Edoyemi Ogoh in his presentation traced poor quality of service to fibre cuts, community issues, among others.

He said in October 2016, operators experienced 175 cuts across the nation while they recorded 180 cuts in November and 103 in December, 2016.

There were 113 community issues in October 2016, 74 in November and 133 in December, adding that fibre cuts and community issues remain major drawbacks for QoS.

In their various presentations, some of the operators painted a grim picture of their encounters especially in an economy that is going broke.

Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at MTN Nigeria, Mr. Hassan Jamil expressed happiness with the interactive session, so that the regulator can know our situation one on one basis.

He said demand for both voice and data services are on the rise but “we are unable to catch up on investment because of scarce forex availability”.

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