REGULATOR of the telecoms sector, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has slammed a fine of N2.9billion on all the major carriers in the country.
The sanctions were imposed on the telcos within the first and third quarter of last year, it was gathered on Thursday.
According to details of the N2.9 billion fine, Airtel was fined N121 million in March for disconnecting Exchange Telecommunications Limited without regulatory approval, which the Commission said contravened the provisions of the quality of service (QoS) and enforcement processes regulations
MTN, was fined N164.3 million. 9mobile-N5million while Globacom was fined N232 million.
“In the course of monitoring compliance with the do-not-disturb (DND) directive, the Commission discovered that EMTS (9mobile) and Airtel subscribed and billed 13 and 56 MSISDNs (Mobile Station International Subscriber Directory Numbers) respectively on full DND to value-added service (VAS),” the document read.
“Accordingly, the commission communicated with the licensees who claimed that contravention was caused by technical and software challenges. Their pleas were rejected by the commission and they were consequently sanctioned to pay ?5, 000,000 each on February 26th and 27th, 2019 respectively for breach of the directive.
“During an audit exercise carried out by the commission from September 25-28, 2019, it was discovered that Airtel, MTN and Globacom forcefully subscribed some customers to data and value-added services in contravention of the commission’s directive on forceful subscription.”
Although the telcos were reported to have made refunds to some of the affected customers, Airtel was fined N2.3 billion; Globacom, N232 million; and MTN, N164 million.
9mobile received another fine of N5,001,000 after a complaint that it effected automatic renewal of data subscription on a customer’s account.
Online knowledge bank, Wikipedia, described MSISDNs as a number uniquely identifying a subscription in a Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) or a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) mobile network. “It is the mapping of the telephone number to the subscriber identity module in a mobile or cellular phone. This abbreviation has several interpretations, the most common one being “Mobile Station International Subscriber Directory Number”.
