The press was recently awash with the news that the Minister for Communication Technology, Mrs Omobola Johnson, has warned telecom operators in Nigeria to improve their service quality or face sanctions. According to the reports, from 2014, telcos that fail to meet agreed key performance indicators (KPIs) will face penalties including fines, withdrawal of licences and five-year jail terms.

This sounds like good news. For too long, customers have suffered poor telecom services delivered with impunity, without any decisive intervention from industry regulators. That’s why customers lug about three or four mobile phones, hoping that at least one will work when required. With dual-SIM phones, the stress is less.

But before anyone shouts “Hallelujah!,”  we need to ask some questions. Who measures the key performance indicators? How and when are they measured? If the telcos are fined, who benefits from the fines? How will the customer be compensated for poor service? In short, how does the customer feature in the entire plan? After all, the customer bears most of the cost – monetary, time and psychic – for service failures. Whatever else they do, regulators must ensure that customers are duly compensated for service failures, except when customers are informed of service disruptions for routine maintenance.  Compensation should be mandatory for services with short validity periods such as data bundles, Blackberry subscriptions, etc.

As an advocate of service excellence, I find the service delivered by telcos in Nigeria very appalling. Barely two weeks ago, my Glo line went dead for 48 hours although I had enough airtime and a valid data subscription. All I could get on a line I had registered four times was: “This call cannot be completed. Please contact your mobile operator.”

Four times, I called the Glo customer care – that was the only number I could reach! Four times I received canned, monotonous responses from customer care representatives who couldn’t identify what was wrong. The only help they could offer was to say “sorry” and report the issue to “the appropriate department.” It wasn’t amusing. At the time of writing, I am yet to receive any explanation or compensation from Glo for such inexplicable service failure.
The point is not to demonise Glo. Only recently, I stopped using the MTN Blackberry Service (after four years) because of poor service.  At various times, I have also used the services of Airtel, Etisalat, Visafone, Multilinks and Starcomms.  At best, they all deliver average service.

This is why I find number portability amusing. Beyond retaining one’s number, I can’t see any other benefit!
Telecom operators need to up their game. Many of them have excelled in executing laudable corporate social responsibility projects, but they must not forget their core mandate: excellent telecom services. That’s what we pay for.

Interestingly, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has reported that there were over 121 million active lines in Nigeria as at September 2013. About 98 percent of those lines were GSM. Yet, we have only four GSM operators. Is it surprising that service fails often? Is it not time to licence more GSM operators or are there no willing investors in the sector anymore? Considering that many Nigerians have two, three or four GSM lines, it is likely that there are only 50 to 60 million subscribers, leaving a huge population unserved.
As a people, we love talking. We’re now also pinging and surfing a lot. It’s time to lower the entry barrier and license more operators.