NCC queries MTN over poor services

A QUERY was yesterday issued to MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) over poor services provided the public by the former.

MTN was asked to explain why it should not be visited with appropriate sanctions for the unbearable poor quality of services in Lagos and its environs.

In the query signed by both NCC’s Directors of Technical Standards and Network Integrity, as well as Legal Services, Dr. Balarabe Sani and Josephine Amuwa, NCC also claimed that MTN’s Switch in Lagos has been down for some time and no information as to what happened was sent across by the telecommunications firm to either the Commission or an appeal to its subscribers.

“It has also been brought to our notice that the MTN Switch in Lagos is down and MTN has neither informed its subscribers, nor communicated this unfortunate development to the Commission as required”, they stated.

The NCC asked MTN to, within 24 hours, furnish the Commission with a detailed report on the developments and efforts being made to urgently address the problem.

“Please note that failure to respond as directed might result in the Commission invoking its powers to sanction MTN appropriately”, it said.

The letter further explained that subscribers in Lagos and its environs have experienced difficulties in the use of their phones on the MTN network, stressing that upon investigations by the Commission, it was discovered that the company’s switch was down, a situation which ought to be communicated to the Commission and brought to the knowledge of the subscribers by the company.

NCC affirmed that the query to MTN was in line with NCC’s commitment to enforcing all actions as prescribed by a new regulation on quality of service in the networks.

But reacting to the development, the General Manager, Corporate Communications for MTN Nigeria, Funmi Omogbenigun, said the telecommunications outfit sent messages to both the regulator and the its teeming subscribers.

According to her: “This report from the NCC comes as a surprise to us. A fire incident at our Ikoyi switch took place on the evening of May 1. It was quickly rectified and we realised that it would take a few hours for the full impact of the resolution to be felt by all those who were affected.

“A letter was sent to the NCC on May 2 informing them of the incident. We posted notification to our customers on our Twitter and Facebook pages. We also sent out radio announcements and SMS messages to affected customers. Please note that we deployed the fastest platforms of communication with our customers.

“In fact, we sent follow-up SMS today to alert our customers that service has been fully restored. All our messages to our customers contained an explanation and full apologies”.

She informed that service was fully restored yesterday, “and we use this medium to apologise to our customers once more”.