By Adekunle Adekoya, Emeka Aginam, & Prince Osuagwu
WHILE reaffirming a bid to sustain growth in the nation’s  telecoms industry via a six-point agenda in the next five years, it will not be business as usual as the industry regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, served notice that it would enforce compliance with, and strictly enforce extant regulations and directives.

Serving the notice was Executive Vice-Chairman of NCC, Dr.  Eugene Juwah in an interactive session  with IT journalists last week in Lagos. He said that these  regulations were products of wide consultation.

“It  is incumbent on the Commission to see to their full compliance. A lot of consumer issues prevalent in the industry today are as a result of tardy compliance with regulations instituted by the regulator.

Executive Vice-Chairman of NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah

“The situation must change and all the stakeholders in the industry will need to inject new corporate governance approach towards compliance with existing regulations and directions.

With scheme of things in  regulation, every service provider will now be held properly accountable by telecom consumers and the regulator.

lNew monitoring body set up
To push this aspiration, Juwah disclosed that  the recently-set up monitoring and compliance department of the Commission is being equipped with the human and material resources needed for effective performance of their jobs in line with the new focus of the Commission.

“Regulations and directives of the Commission will not only be obeyed, but seen to be obeyed.

In cases where regulations are not equipped with adequate sanctions to compel adherence or recompense, we are going to look at those regulations with a view to effecting reviews as quickly as possible,” he warned.

According to Juwah who was  talking tough on shape of things to come, quality of service is not negotiable.

His words: “It is not acceptable by the Commission. We will apply sanction if the service providers fail to comply. We have defined performance indices. We will apply sanction where they are not met. We have observed lapses from operators on issues of regulatory compliance. We are working to strict compliance.  NCC will use key performance indices to monitor operators for possible sanction. We are serious about it,” he said.

Given the circumstances, exigencies and urgencies required to achieve spread of basic telephony services in the country, he said that the Commission’s focus in the last ten years was directed at growing teledensity with the massive deployment of mobile telephony.
The result of this, according to him , was the current impressive statistics of over 80 million active lines and more than 110 million connected lines. Teledensity is now above 53 per cent.

To sustain this growth, he stated in part  that  in the next five years, the  regulatory focus of the commission  shall be directed at six  key areas:

*Consolidation and Integration of Mobile Services
“The current mobile network in Nigeria is not fully optimized. The nation can derive more value from an enhanced  and optimized mobile network, especially with an improved Quality of Service. The Commission will encourage the upgrade of mobile networks to include 3G data overlays for the implementation of application services including but not limited to mobile payment, estate agency and other entertainment services using the Internet as a plank.

We want to achieve this by implementing the key performance indicators for quality of services that can be possibly monitored independently by the Commission with zero tolerance for  non compliance.”

*Fixed Line and Broadband Deployment for National Development
“It has been said that Nigeria missed a great opportunity for her inability to massively deploy fixed lines when other development_focused nations of the world did.

While it is true that mobile phones have attained high penetration and usage, for many homes, businesses and companies, there still exists a yawning need for basic fixed line access with its numerous advantages.  Also, the premium nature of mobile services contributes to the issue of its afford ability compared with fixed lines.

This has led to some despair in many circles about the ability of this nation to catch up with the robustness of a fixed network complemented by mobile. As a matter of deliberate focus, we shall strive to bring fixed lines back to homes, schools, offices, and businesses.  To achieve this, plans for massive deployment of broadband infrastructure will be explored by the Commission.”

*Enhanced Competitive Market, Enhanced Choices for the Consumer
There is need to enhance the competition in the market place today. Competition brings about the best in all the operators. Competition also breeds best atmosphere for the consumer.

Enhanced competition in the market and availability of choice is a statement of intention to fight for the interest of the consumer. We shall make efforts to ensure that costs continue to drop. In a true competitive environment, there is no reason why prices will not drop.

When you have true competition, prices will drop. We will continue to vigorously pursue programmes that will deepen competition and bring down prices, such as introduction of more operators and programmes such as number portability.  We want to address this through strategic actions aimed at improving competition and accountability of the service providers to the consumers of their products and services.

*Vigorous Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement of Regulations and Directions
“We have observed a major lapse in the disposition of the service providers towards compliance to regulations or directions issued by the Commission. This is as a result of a combination of factors, including sanctions for non-compliance that are not commensurate to the degree of breach. This is prevalent in spite of the fact that same service providers are fully consulted during the processes of formulation of the regulations.

“In some cases, factors attributable to the harsh operating environment have put the regulator at the long end of wielding the big stick. It would therefore appear that the service providers have taken this soft approach towards enforcement and compliance to regulations for granted in the discharge of their responsibilities to the nation, the Commission and the consumers.

In cases where regulations are not equipped with adequate sanctions to compel adherence or recompense, we are going to look at those regulations with a view to effecting reviews as quickly as possible.”

*National Connectivity for Accelerated Growth
“One of the key milestones in the measurement of the attainment of the vision statement of the Commission is in the reduction of distance to access to telecommunications services for every Nigerian. Achieving national connectivity through deployment of fibre rings across the nation and cascading broadband and ICT infrastructure will form our road map in promoting availability and access for national economic and social development.

The programmes and projects of the Universal Service Provision Fund Secretariat, the Wire Nigeria Project, WIN, and the State Accelerated Broadband Initiative, SABI, will form the plank for this major focus aimed at accelerated access provisioning in Nigeria. These projects will be restructured to give them more verve to achieve these objectives within realistic timelines. General roll out of broadband access will be encouraged as we focus in this area.”

*Enhanced International Relations
Under our administration, we shall give more vent to our international relations and interactions. The benefit of this focus translates in the attraction of investments, projects and good image to the country.

With our population and positioning in Africa, the visibility of our country, especially within the international telecom decision making bodies and organizations need to be enhanced. In this direction, we will reconstruct our approach to international telecom relations with a view to sharpening our visibility and playing in the main stream of international relations for the Commission and country.

It is also in this direction that our delegation met recently in Mexico at the 10th Plenipotentiary Meeting with the Secretary General of the International Telecommunications Union, ITU, Dr. Hamadoun Toure, for the Digital Bridge Institute, DBI, in Nigeria to be conferred the status of Centre of Excellence. Our roles in such sub_regional bodies like West Africa Telecommunications Regulatory Assembly, WATRA, will be enhanced as the pioneer of such organization as we now have some Nigerian companies rolling out services across the Nigerian borders.