By PRINCE OSUAGWU
LAGOS—Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has issued a warning to three major Nigerian telecom operators, asking them to tackle their poor quality of service by end of November or face suspension which would include stoppage from sales of SIM cards.

The commission said  the three operators have fallen short of the key performance indicators it set to determine operators’ level of improvement on quality of service.

The commission, however, gave the three operators the benefit of getting their acts right in 30 days,  effective from November 1, or risk the big stick which the commission have threatened to wield.

Making more clarification on the issue, Head, Media & Public Relations of NCC, Mr Reuben Muoka, said : “This deadline follows a dismal performance by the three operators on quality of service from the result of an independent monitoring carried out by the commission across the country which showed that all the three operators failed to meet with four key performance indicators that are crucial for quality of service improvements as set by the commission.”

“Consequently, the Commission has notified the three operators of its intention to issue a direction that with effect from November 30, 2011, any of the operators that fail to meet the targets will be barred from further sale of its SIM Cards or addition of any new subscriber to its network. Any new SIM card sold, or additional subscriber added to the network in contravention of the direction, will attract a penalty of N1,000,000 ( One Million Naira) per subscriber added”.

The Commission in a notice of intention to issue the direction to the operators, also told the three operators that at the expiration of the 30-day deadline, it will strictly enforce the impending direction whose contravention will attract a penalty of N5,000,000 ( Five Million Naira), and additional N500,000( Five Hundred Thousand Naira)  per day that such contravention persists.

Apparently to ensure that the operators do not take its threat with levity, the commission said that failure of any of the operators to meet the quality of service targets from November 30, 2011 will attract a fine of  N500,000 (Five Hundred Thousand Naira) for every month of failure.

Part of NCC’s notice to the operators read “It is not in doubt that the customer experience on your network has been far from satisfactory, especially as the Commission has been inundated with complaints from various subscribers on this matter”.

Part of the Key Performance indicators measured by the Commission included Call Set Up Success Rate, Call Completion Rate, Stand Alone Dedicated Control Channel and Handover Success Rate.