By Time Nigeria
Senate has resolved to invite the four leading Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM operators; the MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9Mobile in order to check intrusive and unsolicited adverts from them to their numerous Nigerian customers.
Others to appear before the Senate Committee on Communications are the Nigerian Communications Commissions, NCC; the Consumer Protection Council, CPC; and the Association of Advertising Practitioners of Nigeria, AAPN, to seek ways of addressing the situation.
Senate particularly urged the NCC to ensure that any person, or entity found to have abused regulatory guidelines, is sanctioned, in accordance with the extant rules and regulations.
These resolutions followed a motion, “Need to check Intrusive and Unsolicited Adverts by Telecom Companies and Service Providers” sponsored by Senator Yahaya Abdullahi during Tuesday’s plenary.
Presenting the motion, Senator Abdullahi recalled with sense of nostalgia, the euphoria that attended the commencement of the GSM, 17 years ago in Nigeria and worried about the continued deterioration of GSM services in the country.
He regretted that “though the service providers have been reaping huge revenues from their investments, Nigerians have not enjoyed commensurate quality of services”.
The lawmaker was worried about increased incidence of dropped calls, unaccounted “disappearance” of airtime from devices, weak signals across networks and false report of unavailable call destinations.
Senator Abdullahi further expressed concern about the issue of frequent unsolicited calls, product and programme promos, as well as instances of tricking Nigerians to subscribe to riddles and jokes, indiscriminate religious contents and caller tunes that sometimes offend subscribers’ sensibilities.
He noted that “even with the setting up of the ‘Do-Not-Disturb’, DND opt-out application, as demanded by the NCC, the GSM operators have not done enough to educate the public on its availability and workings”.
“With high tariffs and an estimated 150 million subscribers in the country, the four leading operators within the industry, namely MTN, (53.4million, or 39%), Airtel, (38.3 million, or 26%), Globacom, (38.2 million, or 26%) and 9Mobile, (16.8%, or 12%), the companies are yet to fully integrate themselves into the larger Nigerian economy, in ways that could provide opportunities for Nigerians to benefit from their operations.”
In his contribution, the Senate Deputy Leader, Senator Bala Ibn Na’Allah urged the National Assembly to rise to the occasion by halting the trend in the interest of Nigerian subscribers.
The Senate president, Dr. Bukola Saraki called on the NCC, CPC, AAPN, and other stakeholders to seek ways of addressing the situation without allowing it to affect the nation’s economy.