THREE TELECOMS OPERATORS PAY N647M FOR POOR SERVICE

• SIM Cards Sales, Promos Remain Banned, Says Regulator
THE major GSM operators, including MTN Nigeria; Airtel and Globacom, that were slammed with N647.5 million being fine for failing to meet key performance indicators in January have paid the penalty to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
The operators were said to have made the payment on Friday, which was the deadline set by NCC for the operators to complete payment, failure of which would attract extra fine of N2.5 million daily.
Also, NCC has maintained that the ban on sales of new SIM cards and the running of promotions by affected networks remain till end of the month.
Confirming the payment to The Guardian, yesterday, Head of Media and Public Relations at NCC, Reuben Muoka said the three affected operators made their payment yesterday (Friday).
“You know yesterday (Friday) was the deadline given to them and as at evening before the close of work, I learnt they have all paid. They paid N647.5 million as they were sanctioned respectively,” he stated.
Muoka, however, said the ban placed on sales of SIM cards and all forms of promos on the affected networks remain, stressing that it would be on till the end of March as stated in the sanction letter earlier addressed to the operators.
He disclosed that the commission is monitoring the ban, stressing that any operator caught flouting the rule will be dealt with.
It will be recalled that the NCC had in letters dated February 19, 2014, addressed to each of the affected companies, said that after collating statistics from the network operating centres of the operators in the month of January, discovered that the services provided by MTN, Airtel and Globacom fell below the KPI published by it in 2013.
A breakdown of the sanctions indicated that Globacom was penalised, N277.5 million for three breaches, while MTN and Airtel got sanctioned N185 million each for two breaches.
According to NCC, only Etisalat got a clean bill as it met all the set KPIs.
The regulator explained that four critical KPIs were set by it – Call Setup Success Rate (CSSR), Drop Call Rate (DCR), Traffic Channel Congestion (TCHCONG) and Stand Alone Dedicated Control Channel Congestion (SDCONG).
With a target of 98 per cent for CSSR, MTN, Airtel, and Globacom failed to meet the target in January. They scored 96.85 per cent, 96.99 per cent and 96.89 per cent respectively.
NCC set a target of 1 per cent in the DCR category. The audit report referred to by NCC in its letter stated that for the month of January, MTN and Globacom failed to meet the target, while Airtel exceeded the target with a score of 0.84 per cent.
For the SDCONG KPI, with a target of 0.20 per cent, Airtel and Globacom failed to meet the target, scoring 0.40 per cent and 0.58 per cent respectively, while MTN exceeded the target with a score of 0.17 per cent.
For the last KPI, TCHCONG, with a target of 2 per cent, all the three networks exceeded the target, as MTN scored 0.55 per cent; Globacom – 0.79 per cent; and Airtel – 0.79 per cent. In summary, MTN failed to meet the targets set in the Quality of Service Regulations for the CSSR and DCR computations; Globacom failed to meet the targets set for CSSR, DCR and SDCONG computations; while Airtel failed to meet the targets for CSSR and SDCONG computations.
Source: Guardian