By Felix Ugboja
ABUJA (Sundiata Post) The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has held its 84th edition of Telecom Consumer Parliament (TCP) which calls on telecom service providers in the country to improve their service delivery to customers.
The conference with the theme, ‘’Improving Service Delivery to Telecom Consumers: Key to Industry Sustainability,’’ was held on Thursday at NAF Conference Centre, Kado, Abuja.
While delivering his welcome address at the conference attended by telecom industry stakeholders and members of the consumer’s parliament, Alhaji Ismail Adediba of the NCC stated that by organising stakeholders program like this, the commission is able to device ways of addressing telecom consumers’ needs.
According to the Executive Vice Chairman of the commission, Prof Umar Garba Danbatta, ‘’The event is held quarterly in line with the commission’s vision of protecting, informing and educating consumers of telecom services on issues of common interest and current developments in the industry.’’
Many customers of the telecom industry in Nigeria have a lot of complaints about ‘service delivery’ with network operators, ranging from the quality of service, experience, customer complaint resolution, nuisance calls and text messages, drop calls, data cost, poor data, among others.
Danbatta said that ‘’In spite of series of initiatives put in place by the commission to keep operators on their toes, gaps are still being noticed in the areas of quality of service delivery and consumer complaint resolution, among others.’’
Danbatta further stated that improving telecoms services has become critical, not only to businesses but also to the entire national economy.
‘’On our path,’’ he said about the commission. ‘’We promote improved service delivered by the operators through close monitoring of the quality of service using key performance indicators, and sometimes, sanction them for poor service quality. We also ensure that we constantly dialogue with industry stakeholders in a forum such as this to help diagnose their challenges and proffer solutions.’’
He further revealed that the commission monitors call centres and customer service centres of the operators and also mandate them to develop individual code of practise in order to effectively resolve customer’s complaint. The commission has also urged the operators to build more customer care centres.
‘’Our Do-Not-Disturb (DND) facility and the NCC 622 Toll Free Line have also been set up to ensure improvement in service delivery. For DND, customers have the power to stop all unsolicited messages on their mobile devices or choose specific messages they would like to be getting from service providers,’’ he added.
The commission also uses fines to sanction nonconforming operators.
The Executive Chairman also recognised the problem of access gaps in the country, especially in the rural areas. The gap, according to him has been reduced from 207 to 105. Rural connections, according to him are in progress but will take about 20 years for those gaps to be fully bridged.
Given this long period of waiting, Rural Technology Solution, he said, has been deployed through a pilot scheme in about 3 locations and most of the operators are disposed to this project to increase rural access.
He also stated that for small industry operators, there are new palliatives for spectrum in terms of reduction of payment which will also be in instalments.
The Executive Chairman stated his optimism about the ability of the consumer parliament to come up with specific and concrete recommendations on how to achieve improved service delivery.