Over the past few months, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has been pushing new ways of improving the quality of telecom service in the country, but has largely come up empty in on-the-ground improvements. Now, the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Titi Omo-Ettu says that it can become a reality. Omo-Ettu said that the footprint of NCC in the nation's telecom sector over the past 10 years in the area of growth was not in doubt, but maintained that the agency “had not lived up to its billings in keeping the operating companies on their toes, through a periodic review of the key performance index and use of sanction against the defaulters among them.” If done properly, subscribers would “enjoy better services if [the] NCC could admit its area of deficiency in regulating the industry and come up with a renewed approach that would make it wield the stick on any operators that is found wanting in its operation, thereby denying subscribers the expected quality of service.” He also called on users in the country to be more aware of the services they are demanding in order to hold their company responsible and accountable to their demands. He called on users to be more considerate in their demand and condemnation of the operators, who he said go through myriads of operating challenges in the country. “We are not regulating. What we are doing is building the market. I think NCC should begin to look at how operators are complying with the key performance indicators and also sanction defaulting operators who fail to do the right thing because that is the only way they can be kept on their toes by NCC,” he added. BM
