However, the benefits and development enjoyed so far from this technological innovation are being threatened by the dismal quality of services offered by mobile phone operators. To make matters worse the services being offered seem to be deteriorating. There are in fact those who would argue that it is not as good, compared to the time when the services debuted in the country. Clearly, the Nigeria’s subscriber is faced with many frustrations resulting from poor services.

 There is no doubt that all is not well with the quality of services provided in Nigeria by the mobile communications service providers. The truth is that since the advent of GSM in Nigeria, the subscribers have been at the receiving end of poor services as evidenced by excessive billings, poor coverage, inability to recharge, interrupted calls and reception, bills for calls not made and other sharp practices that have characterised their operations.

 The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has attempted severally to resolve issues in this regard but it met little success every time. NCC established the Telecom Consumer Parliament to provide a platform to address some of these issues but the operators have turned it to another marketing window. In December 2006, the commission had directed all mobile operators to implement a minimum call completion rate of 90 percent or face sanction for poor quality service. Additionally, they were asked to report their quality of service indicators to the commission on a monthly basis to enable the industry regulator assess the operators’ performance. But every available indicator has shown that the operators have flouted these orders.

Recently, the NCC issued a directive to the dominant operator, MTN Nigeria to submit its quality of service performance report or face sanctions. Evidently, the commission’s demand that operators conform to the best practices and international standards, is in order but instead of fulfilling these expectations, the operators are busy expanding the market without commensurate good services.

Ernest Ndukwe, the Executive vice chairman (EVC) of the NCC, have called on operators to focus on building capacity rather than running promotions that further compounds the congestion in the networks. In addition, he has announced a ban on all sales promotion as they compound the congestion experienced on the networks. The currently run Celtel promotion that gives subscribers 1 hour of free calls on Sunday is not really helping matters. I have not been able to get a single call through all day. SMS sending too fail. Browsing the net is a sluggish affair. This was my experience last Sunday, said Yomi Adegboye. We all know the capacity to carry heavy traffic is not there, where doing invitation to threat.

 Many subscribers had complained that the hiccups in services had resulted in loss of opportunities, time and money.

Some of the lapses which the NCC has observed in the service delivery of the GSM operators and for which the commission have received several complaints include:

 i. The high rate of call attempts;

 ii. High rate of call drop

 iii. Call interference and loss of audio;

 iv. Non delivery of SMS;

 v. Multiple billing for SMS;

 vi. Wrong feedback for SMS; and

 vii. Other call and billing problems

 viii. Inability to recharge among others.

 Operators, on the other hand have argued that power outage is the greatest cause of poor quality service in the country. Other challenges include security and connectivity issues.

The Association of Licenced Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), the umbrella body for network operators licensed to provide telecommunications service in the country while apologising to subscribers for the difficulties and inconveniences encountered with regard to poor network quality in recent times however note that the cause many times is outside providers’ sphere of control..

Engineer Gbenga Adebayo, chairman, revealed that are increasing incidence of theft of generators in the last six months coupled with massive unprecedented diesel theft at base stations leading to significant network outages particularly where such sites are transmission sites.

 He said vandalisation of network equipment and theft of copper cables have caused further down time while “Our members have suffered several causalities and fatalities as a result of the activities of criminals and armed robbers and are often unable to carry out necessary remedial maintenance as at when necessary.” Forced relocation of hundreds of kilometres of fibre optic cable as a result of road works and inadvertent cutting of critical fibre cables is another challenge operators have to contend with.

He appealed to the government to designate telecommunications and infrastructures as critical national infrastructure is the requisite protection to deter vandals and criminals.

According to him, ALTON members remain committed to providing reliable and consistent network services to subscribers and maintaining an open dialogue on issues and challenges at hand. We consider it our mandate to provide world-class telecommunications services to the Nigerians subscribers and contribute to the sustainable, progressive development of Nigerian economy and society.

 Dave Imoko, Head, Public Affairs, NCC, said that the commission is not unaware of the pains consumers have been under but reassured it was working to ameliorate the situation within the shortest possible time.

He revealed that, “The Commission empathises with telecom consumers for these problems and wishes to reassure them that the Commission is taking measures to ensure that the GSM operators restore services to an acceptable level in the shortest possible time.

 Imoko said that although the operators have cited challenges associated with the current down turn in the power supply situation in the country, the Commission is determined to guarantee that telecom consumers are able to enjoy improved quality of service as well as get value for money paid for services.

 In a bid to achieve some sort of concession the NCC held a public forum on quality of service in Abuja recently. The forum, however, insisted among other thing that the primary responsibility of ensuring good Quality of Service delivery rests with the service provider and that operators should be more pro-active in informing consumers of network failures and downtime.

The way forward is collaboration. The government improve power supply, operators pay particular attention to quality of service, something they not doing now, and the NCC monitoring to ensure QoS benchmarks are met. The Nigeria telecommunication subscriber deserves value for money.

 COMMUNIQUE QoS of service forum

 The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) being concerned about the recent degradation in the Quality of Service (QoS) on the networks of telecommunications service providers in the country held a Public Forum on Wednesday June 27, 2007 at the Transcorp Hilton, Abuja to:

  Identify issues affecting Quality of Service in Nigeria

   Seek solution to the current QoS challenges in the industry, and

   Make recommendations on the way forward

  Participants at the Forum were made up of representatives of network operators, consumer groups, experts on QoS issues and members of the general public.

A number of presentations addressing the above issues were made and the several contributions were received from participants during an open discussion session. The Forum identified critical issues that would require immediate attention in order to mitigate the current unacceptable QoS delivered by the various networks. These issues include:

 i.  Unreliable public Power Supply

  ii.  Security

 iii.  Limited Transmission Infrastructure

  iv.  Network congestion

v.  Lack of Information to consumers on downtime.

    Power

 Participants at the Forum identified power as the major challenge to Quality of Services. Operators claim that it contributes at least 70% to the Quality of Service problem in the industry. It was observed that generally the issues of power supply are within the ambit of government hence the recent efforts to reform the energy sector were applauded. However, there is a need to accelerate efforts in this regards. Pending when the government resolves the matter, operators were encouraged to improve upon the backup power supply deployments and also consider alternative power supply sources.

 Security

  Participants brought to the fore the security challenges faced by operators such as theft of generating sets, diesel, vandalisation of installations, youth restiveness etc. Various suggestions were made and it was recommended that operating companies should reach out to the police, civil defence corps and other security agencies to form a joint task force to aggressively address the issue of security. The Commission is to send a report is to government to highlight this threat to effective Quality of Service delivery.

  Limited Transmission Infrastructure

 The Forum noted the huge investment by operators in this area but encouraged them to do more.

 The Forum also noted that while it is the responsibility of operators to build their infrastructure, continued government support through the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) and projects like SABI (state accelerated Broadband Initiative), WiN (Wire Nigeria Project) etc will be fast-tracked to support operators’ efforts.

 Network Congestion

 Participants expressed great concern about operators’ penchant for adding more subscribers than their network can accommodate.

 The Forum considered it advisable that operators should:

   limit promotions on their networks to only those that will not encourage more minutes of call, and

   dimension their network within available capacity.

 Lack of Information on Network Failures

It was noted that operators are not forthcoming with up-to-date information to subscribers about network failures and the challenges faced in their operations. Participants identified repeated call attempts as one of the factors responsible for congestion on networks and this has multiplier effect across networks.

 RESOLUTIONS BY THE FORUM

• the primary responsibility of ensuring good Quality of Service delivery rests with the service provider
• Operators should be more pro-active in informing consumers of network failures and downtime.
• The public forum on QoS should be institutionalized and held more regularly.
• Govt is requested to fast track reform in the power sector and building of new power plants.
• Establishment of QoS Working Group comprising of operating companies, representatives of ALTON, ATCON, representatives of the Commission, consumer advocacy groups and other interested individuals.
• The commission reiterated the availability of Funds under the Universal Service fund for infrastructural development (especially in rural areas) and invited operators to take advantage of this scheme.