By Laide Akinboade
Minister of Information and Communications, Professor Dora Akunyili, Monday, charged the newly inaugurated board members of Nigerian Communications Commissions, NCC, to ensure reduction in tariffs, sim card registration, number portability and improved quality of service.

Akunyili who stated this while inaugurating the members of the board, said though there had been lot of improvement in telecommunication in Nigeria but a lot still needed to be done.

According to her, “the new board has the inevitable task of taking the flight to a new level. That new level is one of reduced tarrifs by operators, sim card registration, number portability and improved quality of service. It is about greater consumer education and the use of regulatory tools to woo operators to focus attention on the sharing on infrastructure and co-location of services.”

“On high tariffs, considering our huge population, we deserve to have one of the lowest tariffs in Africa despite our obvious infrastructural challenges. Infrastructural sharing will definitely reduce operational cost and drive down tariffs. “

She said henceforth, all lottery promotions must comply and be approved by the Nigeria Lottery Regulatory Commission. And NCC must ensure that consumers were educated and must approve educational manual before it was introduced to the general public.

The minister who decried the cost of internet services in the country said there is need for the development of broadband in the country.

“Our teledensity has not yet achieved parity with the active segment of the population, swathes of our country side beyond the high ways have no telecoms signals, while cost of internet services is still high this is according to your Report on market dominance of March 2010.

There is little doubt that NITEL has for a number of years held a position of dominance over access to ICC by Nigerian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as a result of its control over SAT-3 cable. NITEL seems to have charged prices considerably high than comparable markets and provided a relatively poor service.” She said

She stressed, “With a total of 4.42bits/s of broadband capacity slated to come on stream this year compared to NITEL’s 0.34bit/s, there is no reason why your new board should not be gearing up with excitement for increased activities in the broadband segment of the market. You have done well to begin activities in Child on line protection with a successful conference in Lagos, but much work still lies ahead.

I did not appreciate how critical this child on line protection service until I visited Garki hospital few days ago where I saw a child that was flogged by a teacher to a point of losing an eye. The case was never reported to anybody. I was even told by the Surgeon that the case of pupils losing their sight through flogging in school is very common. There is need to sensitize the general public on the use of child on line protection service.”

She therefore assured the board members of the support of the Federal Government and the Ministry.

In separate speeches, Chairman of the Board and the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Mr Peter Igho and Eugene Juwa, respectively, promised to ensure that they operations were in tandem with the provision establishing the commission.