By Inalegwu Shaibu
ABUJA— Executive Vice Chairman of Nigeria Communications Commission, NCC, Engr. Eugene Juwah, has said all unregistered Global System of Mobile communication, GSM, numbers will be banned upon the completion of SIM card registration process.

Engr. Juwah, who disclosed this to the Senate Committee on Communications yesterday, in Abuja, also said that the commission would sanction any service provider that was guilty of rendering poor quality service in the month of November.

He told the committee that the commission had put in place strategy to analyse all services provided by the service providers on monthly basis and anybody found guilty would be punished in accordance with laws set by the commission.

He said: “We have provided a short code for people to send messages to find out whether they are registered or not. After this exercise, we will now ban all unregistered numbers.

“After all that we have provided for the registration of SIM cards, if anybody has not registered, it means the person is not ready to register.”

On penalties for poor services, the Executive Vice Chairman said the commission issued out directives to all service providers in the country to guide them on their operations.

He said: “We have issued directives to operators for November. We will download and analyse November performance in consonance with the directives. We will penalize them based on the law if they are found wanting in providing quality services to their customers.”

Earlier, chairman of the Committee, Senator Gilbert Nnaji, said the committee was worried by the complaints of poor quality services coming in from Nigerians.

He urged the NCC to ensure Nigerians get better treatment from all the service providers operating in the country.