The NCC is seeking help from Office of the National Security Adviser to shore up deteriorating services, writes SONNY ARAGBA-AKPORE
With recorded cases of 27,000 fibre optic cable cuts in 2025 alone, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is worried about the state of quality of service and seeks help from the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) to manage and reduce to the barest minimum the incessant cuts on fibre optic cables by alleged vandals across the country. The NCC is equally disturbed that unless the ONSA and other security and concerned agencies support the moves to checkmate the increasingly sophisticated fibre optics cuts, its desire to reduce vandalism may be a pipe dream. And the quality of service will continue to decline.
In 2024, NCC published guidelines on Quality of Service (QoS) thresholds, and among others, specifies possible sanctions for operators who do not comply with the threshold. But while this appears to be in the right direction, poor QoS does not rest alone on the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), the commission reasons. Only recently, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Central Bank (CBN) on how Mobile Network Operators (MNOS) should compensate subscribers for failed and incomplete calls. The NCC wants to enforce standards and strict regulations for optimum subscribers’ experience, and it wants us to believe. Early last week, Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy Minister Bosun Tijani gave a marching order to the NCC to enforce compliance with the Quality-of-Service guidelines it initiated in 2024.
