By Angela Nkwocha
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has received commendations from the Nigerian Senate for exceptional organisational performance which saw to its emergence in the platinum category award.
The Commission received the commendation during an oversight and fact finding visit by the Senate Committee on Communications, at the commission’s headquarters in Abuja.
Rolling out the applause, the chairman Senate Committee on Communications, Mrs Oluremi Tinubu, expressed optimism that the telecommunications industry would see better days ahead, adding that so far she had experienced good service relationships with service providers.
“We will come again and that will be going to visit most of your sites and see how far you have gone with the 2020 budget and to also prepare us for 2021.
“We are also looking forward to the stakeholders’ conference that we want to have with the telecoms industries. I think it will be very good for us, which we have discussed,” she said.
Speaking ealier the Executive Vice Chairman of (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta, said that power is the biggest challenge facing the telecommunications operations in the country.
He averred that the cost of providing power, especially in the base stations, was high adding that the Commission was working hard to solve the challenge by recommending the use of sustainable energy sources to the telecommunications operators.
On the issue of security, theft of equipment, transmission cable cuts, the EVC said that there were delays in securing approvals for sites at the state level for new base stations as they were harassed by some Agencies.
According to him, the unfair taxes and billing levied on Telcos constitutes a drawback to infrastructure deployment in the telecoms sector.
“Engagements are ongoing with different tiers of government and government agencies at Federal, State and Local Government levels,” he stated.
