Nigeria’s leading telecommunications operator, MTN has disclosed that its regulator, NCC has imposed a fine on the company for ‘failing to meet the minimum quality of service for the period under review in the period March – April 2012.’ The fine is payable on or before 25th May 2012.
All the other GSM operators also received similar fines for the same reason.
In a swift reaction to the NCC directive, Akinwale Goodluck, MTN’s Corporate Services Executive stated that the company remained committed to ensuring the best quality of service for its teeming customers. He said, ‘MTN continues to employ the greatest effort to overcome the infrastructural and environmental challenges that impede the delivery of consistently good quality of service”.
He reiterated the challenges that exist in Nigeria including those related to unavailability of regular power supply, the insecurity of property, vandalization, and the menace of multiple taxation and over-regulation.
Speaking of power, he revealed that the company generates up to 80% of its power requirements, stating that MTN’s network is one of the largest in the world running almost entirely on self generated power. He further revealed that the company expends billions of Naira annually on diesel alone.
Goodluck also lamented the indiscriminate vandalisation of telecommunication infrastructure around the country. He estimated that MTN suffers more than seventy cuts to its fibre on a monthly basis. Indeed, in April this year, MTN had cause to publish full page announcements in the newspapers, alerting the public to the growing incidence of criminal damage to MTN’s infrastructure in various parts of the country and the impact on quality of service in the country, particularly the South East particularly Portharcourt and Onitsha, Lagos, Kano and Abuja.
He commented that the heightened insecurity in several parts of the country has limited MTN’s ability to carry out routine maintenance and emergency repairs.
Goodluck also recalled several incidents of multiple taxation and over regulation, citing as examples the difficulties encountered by MTN in Abia State last year and last week’s face off between NESREA and NCC over jurisdiction to intervene in specific regulatory issues, leading to the closure of a number of MTN sites in Abuja. In each case, as with numerous such incidents all over the country, MTN’s ability to service its customers has been severely impaired.
In a passionate appeal for understanding, Goodluck solicited the co-operation and support of the NCC to assist the industry to overcome the various challenges that he listed. Goodluck added that” no business thrives when its customers complain. It is not in our interest for them to do so. It is our desire that our customers are happy with us or else we do not have a business”.
Whilst reinstating MTN’s commitment to improve its services and apologizing to its customers, he noted that the company would invest more than N200 Billion in 2012 alone in its network infrastructure. ‘No company has invested more than MTN in network infrastructure since 2001. We have not been shy to invest heavily in our business and we will continue to do so.’
