Nigerian subscribers demand to benefit from poor quality service fines on telecoms companies

The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS), the umbrella group for mibile telephony subscribers in Nigeria is asking that the fines imposed on some of the country’s telecoms providers for poor quality of services should benefit them.

According to the group, the heavy fines totalling $7.29 million would be paid to the government, but “but it should actually be paid back to the 100-million mobile phone subscribers of each of the operators, as they suffer directly from the poor quality of service.”

A report by IT News citing the group quoted  its chairman, Deolu Ogunbanjo saying“Why should the NCC raise money in the form of fines for the Federal Government at the expense of subscribers who actually suffered monumental losses as a result of poor quality service rendered by the operators?”

“We agree with the Nigerian Communications Commission’s Standards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as the industry regulator that there was a need to fine the operators for poor service delivery, but the fine should not be used to enrich the Federal Government, it should be shared among the subscribers who have actually paid for services that were either not rendered or haphazardly rendered,” the group further explained, according to the report.

The companies are MTN and Etisalat, which received the heaviest fines of almost $2.3 million each; Airtel was fined a little over $1.7 million, and Glo Nigeria was fined over $1.4 million.

The deadline for payment of the fines is set for May 25, 2012.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi