NATCOMS chief blames poor telecoms services on inadequate facilities

THE President of National Association of Telecoms Subscribers (NATCOMS), Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, has blamed the poor service delivery in telecoms sector on failure of operators to update their facilities.

Ogunbanjo told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) yestersday in Lagos that congestion on the networks became rampant when the operators reduced their tariffs.

He said that because of cheaper tariffs, more subscribers were making more calls even at longer minutes, thereby congesting the networks.

He said with the tariff reduction, those who did not have mobile phones had bought one, saying that with as little as N3,000, one could get a new handset.

“Traffic on the networks is high because tariff has reduced. Many people are abandoning the call centres to call with their handsets.

“This cheaper tariff regime is bound to affect quality of services if the network is not robust enough to accommodate calls.

“We are imploring operators to please improve on their services, because on one hand, they are giving us reduced tariff; on another, we are not enjoying the quality of their services.

“So, we will want them to spend more money on infrastructure that will definitely accommodate as many calls at a time,’’ he said.

Ogunbanjo said the operators needed to further reduce tariffs, adding that the N12 per minute tariff was still high.

Meanwhile, two operators had said they had upgraded their infrastructure.

They, however, said a customer could experience poor service if the customer was calling a network that had not been upgraded.

An official of Glo, who preferred anonymity, said the company had upgraded its facilities, but said he could not speak for other network operators.

Chief Executive Officer, Airtel Nigeria, Mr Rajan Swaroop, said the network had been upgraded since it introduced the 20k per second billing.

Swaroop said Airtel’s subscribers might experience network congestion when they were trying to call other networks.