Lagos – The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS) says that it supports the N34 million fine meted out to Globacom and MTN for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) business rules and regulations breaches.
The President of NATCOMS, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, said the association supported it because the telecommunications operators did not take the number portability serious.
“NATCOMS is in total support of the fine in view of the fact that the telecommunications operators are not taking the Mobile Number Portability seriously.
“The lack of seriousness of the operators to porting service is a choice deprivation to subscribers.
“The sanctioning will make the service providers now take MNP more seriously,’’ he told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
NAN reports that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) fined MTN Nigeria and Globacom Ltd N34 million for non-compliance to MNP business rules and regulations.
The regulatory body made the disclosure in its 2015 Q4 Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Reports.
NCC said that out of the N34 million sanction, Globacom was fined N22 million, while MTN was fined N12 million.
In the 2015 Q3 Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Reports, NCC said it had resolved to monitor and sanction violations with MNP process time obligations to address the increasing cases of porting request rejections.
It said that consequent upon the above, series of compliance checks were carried out regarding timer violations by Donor Operators with respect to “validation and deactivation responses’’ which had timelines of 2 hours and 1 hour respectively.
“After investigations by the regulatory body, MTN and Globacom were found wanting, hence, they were fined N34 million in the Q4 2015’’.[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
The telecoms umpire said in its 2015 Q4 Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Reports that the two telecommunications companies had paid the fine.
It also said that the commission’s activities were consistent with Section 89 of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003.
The commission noted that the section mandated NCC to monitor all significant matters relating to the performance of all licensed telecoms service providers and publish annual reports at the end of each financial year.
NCC said it had developed Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement strategies to prosecute the above mandate.
The commission also said that the strategies would enable it to achieve its objective of fair competition, ethical market conduct and optimal quality of service in the Nigerian telecommunications industry. (NAN)