The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta has said that commercial banks in the country owe telecommunications companies over N17 billion following the regulator’s suspension of its Determination on Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) Pricing last year.
Danbatta added that it has revised the determination on the USSD in line with its mandate to protect the interest of consumers.
He spoke at ATCON’s virtual forum on “Meeting the Interests of Government, Consumers and Telecoms Companies in the Era of Covid-19 and Post Covid-19 Pandemic for Digital Economy Development”.
He explained that the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Ali Isa Ibrahim Pantami had already been briefed on the development with a view to ensuring a quick settlement of the debt.
He noted that the Commission introduced the Do-Not-Disturb (DND) code in 2015, less than 500,000 people activated the code, but there are now 22,722,366 lines on the DND.
Speaking further the EVC said that ninety eight per cent (98%) of the total service-related complaints received from telecoms consumers within a 15-month period, spanning January 2019 to April 2020, have been successfully resolved by the Commission.
On quality of service, Danbatta said “the Commission has monthly engagements with operators as well as quarterly industry working group on Quality of Service and Short Codes, and is currently monitoring 2G Key Performance Indicators, while the KPIs for 4G are being prepared.”
He averred that the amendment to its USSD Determination was necessitated by a protracted dispute between Mobile Network Operators and Financial Institutions on the applicable charges for USSD services and the method of billing.
