The Nigerian Communications Commission has disclosed that mobile network operators in the country recorded 9,077 cases of service outages on their networks in the second quarter of 2020. According to the Executive Commissioner, Stakeholders Management of the commission, Adeleke Adewolu,the development is as a result of unexpected disruptions to operators network quality of service delivery and intermittent quality of experience by consumers. A signed statement by the commission’s director of public affairs Dr Ikechukwu Adinde, indicates that Adewolu gave the indication in a presentation delivered during the first virtual telecoms consumer parliament hosted by the NCC in Abuja. According to him,of the 9,077 service outages recorded by the operators,3,585 were caused by incidences of denial of access to telecoms sites for maintenance,4,972 were triggered by fibre cuts from construction activities and vandalism while 520 cases were as a result of incidence of generator and battery theft at sites. Adewolu however noted that the NCC in a proactive step to mitigate the challenges has taken major decisions to mitigate unforseen challenges that may cause serious disruption in service delivery to the consumers throughout the period of the covid 19 pandemic. The commission further called on all stakeholders to join hands with its effort especially in enlightening citizens on the need to protect the telecom infrastructure in their domain without which quality of service delivery will be hampered. Adewolu further charged operators to increase and improve their network capacity following the unprecedented increase in consumer demand. The commission threaten to sanction service providers if they don’t refrain from indulging in unwholesome practices such as modification of data plans without informing the consumers, putting out provocational advertorial without prior approval by the NCC, changing the names and nomenclature of promotions from what was approved among others to short change consumers. It noted that the consumer code of practice requires that once a contract agreement is signed, parties should adhere to the contract terms and conditions and where a change is required, the validity period should end before any modification is effected.
