Lagos-The Executive Commissioner(Stakeholder Management) of the Nigerian Communications Commission(NCC) Mr Sunday Dare has said that the NCC is working relentlessly to strike a balance in favour of the consumer who is usually at the receiving end.
Dare who said this on Wednesday in a welcome address at the Lagos flag off of the NCC 2017 Year of the Telecom Consumer programme, noted that with a base of over 154 million subscribers, the Nigerian consumers dominate the African telecommunications landscape, adding that the consumer is one of the key stakeholders in the stakeholder ladder of the NCC
He posited that the goal of NCC is to make the consumer experience of the average Nigerian better, stressing that the commission will seek to engage and explore ways to make consumer experience more satisfying within the Nigerian telecoms industry.
According to him, “The NCC is charged with ensuring that the average consumer gets the best satisfaction possible from the use of the line he has acquired. We want both the inbound and outbound call experience to get to a higher standard such that wherever you are calling from, be it from Kano to Kotongora, from Ado-Ekiti to Abuja, from Lagos to Lokoja, from Dutse to Damaturu, Enugu to Yenagoa, and from London to Lagos – NCC wants the consumer to experience good quality of service.
“The drivers of the NCC 2017 Year of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer are the 2442 Do-Not-Disturb Service Code, the 622 toll free complaints line, Quality of Service, QoS and concerns about the Electromagnetic Field, EMF radiation. These are the areas the information provided in the course of the campaign would focus on”.
While reiterating that the NCC has deployed several activities in its strategic plan to run a successful year of the consumer campaign with the support of the operators, he called for support and partnership with the NCC to make customer experience and the telecom industry better.
In his remarks, the Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta noted that the Commission is closely monitoring, tracking and reviewing the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of operators by the Network Integrity and Technical Standards Department, adding that the NCC will not hesitate to enforce sanctions for failure to meet the KPIs and might consider making them even more stringent.
Danbatta further disclosed that the NCC is mindful of the forex challenge faced by the telcos. “We have intervened with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Already this intervention is beginning to yield some results. We are sure that in the not too distant future, the forex challenge will be addressed to the benefit of both the consumer and the operators” he said.
The NCC Year of the Consumer campaign which kicked off in Abuja on March 15 is expected to run through the year 2017 and beyond.
