Stories By
Princewill Ekwujuru

Telecommunications consumers in the last few months to the end of 2014 experienced deluge of poor service which trickled down to the early part of 2015.

For example, many subscribers in the last quarter of 2014 had complained of increased re-vibrated calls, call clashes, SMS charges without delivery, failed data charges, calls from encoder without the decoder hearing from the encoder which has been the stock in trade of service providers overtime.

These situation was attributed to the recent promotion embarked upon by the providers. The Airtel red hot promo, MTN’s cash quest and Glo overload and Glo Allawee, which gives subscribers N18,000 free airtime was said to have compounded glitches in networks, which has led to many subscribers dropping recharges for a while, particularly for a network that has major glitch at the recharging time.

Recently, a mild drama occurred in a family in Lagos where a family was thrown into confusion , when a husband could not be reached owing to network challenges, the husband’s phone had replied the wife that it was switched off, which the wife misinterpreted.

Another was a situation the wife’s phone was believed to be busy when actually her phone was on, while the husband misconstrued it to mean she was not sincere with their relationship.

In 2003, it was reported that the attack on communications facilities by the Boko Haram sect in Borno state was responsible for the lull in network performance, today the situation is different, which has kept subscribers wondering what the challenges are, but that providers are not sincere with their social contract with subscribers.

A glimpse into the telecommunications market show that service providers are not making efforts to right their wrong even in the face of serious network challenges which has also led to abortion of some contractual agreements.

Meanwhile, it appears that the ban laced by the Nigeria Communications Commission, NCC when same problem persisted as a result of barrage of promotions by the providers some years back, may have to be revisited by the commission.

These challenges moved Vanguard to town to test the pulse of consumers. In the 125, 000 subscribers spoken to across the networks, they said despite the crashed tariff, poor services still persist.

A subscriber, Martin Orhii, an Airtel subscriber attributed the congestion to the promotions embarked upon by the service providers, where customers want to participate at the same time, which invariably has led to the challenges on the networks.

Andrew Owei is of the same view with the above subscriber who called for withdrawal of the promotions to enable consumers enjoy services paid for.

Of the 125,000 respondents interviewed across Nigeria, Lagos, Ogun, Osun, Imo, Enugu, Rivers states, during September to December 2014 and part of January 2015 revealed that 55 respondents who are Airtel subscribers were bitter with the network’s service of which they say the network customer service is wonderful at relating with what they call premium subscribers whom they monitor to find out how the network is performing, neglecting other of their subscribers to wallow in congestion occasioned by poor service.

The other 45 respondents said MTN has the same problem associated with other service providers, during the period under review of which they complained of the voice call service, re-vibrated calls and data services.

On the part of Glo consumers it was no different story from what other subscribers have complained about, 35 of the respondents said Glo data services needs improvement, of which eight of the respondents said they had to opt out of their service to switch to another provider where they got a little respite which was also short lived.

Some dealers in major network cards, noted that patronage to telecommunication services in Lagos dropped by over 30 percent particularly at Christmas period when business was expected to flourish.

The distributors blamed the slow nature of business on network congestions and end users complaint of network challenges, pointing out thatsubscribers having been losing much money.

Another distributor on the same products in Lagos said before the present situation he used to sell between N120,000 to N135,000 daily but that has dropped to between N84,000 to N94,500.

Meanwhile, a café operator, George Agom, lamented the network glitches, saying that during the period under review patronage dropped as a result of the challenges, but believed that it will pick up as the year progresses if the service providers do the right thing.

A network provider spoken to said they are working on the glitches to ensure Nigerians enjoy uninterrupted flow of communication in 2015.