The Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), has fined a sum of N127million on Airtel Nigeria over contravening of laws.
According to the Commission’s enforcement report, Airtel was fined N122 million for unilaterally disconnecting Exchange Telecommunications Limited.
NCC said that the action contravened the provisions of the Quality of Service (QoS) Regulations 2013 and Enforcement Processes Regulations, 2005, hence the sanction.
Section 100 of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003 also frowns at disconnection of an operator without approval of NCC. The section states: “Notwithstanding the terms and conditions of any interconnection, a party thereto shall not at any time and in any circumstance disconnect or discontinue interconnection to any interconnecting party without the prior written approval of the Commission.”
It was gathered that Airtel Nigeria disconnected another operator from its network without the regulator’s approval and also for billing subscribers for Value Added Services (VA’s) after the Latter had activated ful Do-Not-Disturb (DND).
NCC added that in the course of monitoring compliance with the DND directive, it discovered that Airtel subscribed 56 numbers that are on full DND to VAS, thereby contravening the regulatory directive.
Also found culpable in this act was EMTS trading as 9mobile, which was said to have subscribed 13 lines on full DND to VAS.
“Following this discovery and subsequent correspondence with the licensees in which both claimed to have had technical/software challenges and to have disconnected the affected numbers, the Commission rejected their responses and consequently sanctioned both EMTS and Airtel N5,000,000 each for breach of the Direction,” NCC said in its report.
NCC enforces 2442 ” Do Not Disturb ” Shortcode, following a direction to the telecommunications service providers in the country. The operators, with effect from July 1, 2016, activated the DO NOT DISTURB facility, which gives subscribers the freedom to choose what messages to receive from the various networks.
According to Head of Information and References at the Consumer Affairs Bureau of NCC, Mr Ismail Adedigba, the introduction of DND was further to the Commission’s determination to put more control in the hands of consumers to determine what they receive on their mobile lines.
Adedigba explained that the Short Code allows telecoms consumers to get more protection against unsolicited text messages received as VAS and nuisance calls as well as against Internet-generated/distributed spam text messages that are fraudulently used to deduct consumer’s airtime credit.
“The DND code can be activated fully by sending “STOP” as a text message to 2442, thereby blocking all unsolicited text messages. It can also be activated partially by sending “HELP” as a text message to 2442 to choose from a list of categories of unsolicited messages which the consumer still wants to be receiving
“We expect that the number of subscribers opting for DND will continue to grow as more consumers become aware of the Short Code through continuous awareness campaigns activities at our outreach events. However, subscription to the service is optional,” he said.
