NCC Asks Operators to Provide Emergency Lines
By Okechukwu Kanu
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has asked operators to immediately give priority to establishment of toll-free emergency lines to their subscribers, saying that such lines are part of the licensing requirement for all operators.
The directive was given by the Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Engr Ernest Ndukwe at the close of the 10th edition of its monthly Consumers Parliament forum in which consumers seek answers to issues affecting the sector.
A quick survey carried out by Ndukwe at the parliament immediately found that virtually all of the operators did not have operational emergency lines.
A few like Multilinks said it had a toll-free 100 line. Vmobile's emergency line is 112, while 199 is for its ambulance service. The largest Nigerian network, MTN said its 112 toll-free emergency line was not working presently because it was still working out arrangements with the police.
With this finding, Ndukwe said NCC would immediately take steps to ensure that operators meet the emergency lines requirement, ensuring that such toll free lines become available and were working. Subscribers, he said, should have access to emergency numbers and it should not depend on whether they have credit or not.
Ndukwe said the NCC would soon organise a workshop that would look at ways to harmonize all toll free emergency numbers so that the subscriber could easily remember such numbers.
Several other issues were resolved at this month's Consumers Parliament, including MTN's return to per second billing.
MTN's CEO, Adrian Wood explained that the company already had 1 million of its customers on per second billing, an increase from, 600,000, which it had at the beginning of the year. In the last few weeks MTN's contract subscribers had been returned the option of migration to per second billing; they only needed to complete a process at the MTN frienship centres, he said.
Wood said By 10th of July, pre paid customers would also be able to migrate to per second billing and that subsequently the number of subscribers able to do this would keep increasing by 50,000 every week.
"By end of year will have the capacity to carry all MTN subscribers on the per second billing at the same time," he said.
On the recent scarcity of MTN's recharge cards, the company's Chief Marketing Officer, Afam Edozie, denied that it was a ploy by MTN to deliberately raise its prices. He also denied that the company was trying to use the scarcity to promote its new recharge mode, the Virtual Top Up, saying that service was still at an infancy stage.
He said a shortage only occurred at the beginning of last week but was quickly rectified, by MTN.
"We since flooded the market with well over 3 million cards last week. As prices remained high, flooded the market with still more cards. We will continue to flood the market with cards until the situation returns to normal," Edozie said. He said recharge cards were available at MTN frienship centres at the recommended price.
On complaints about billing problems on the MTN Boostercard Edozie said compensation was underway in the next four to six weeks. He also said difficulties on the system affecting loading of recharge cards were being sorted out and would soon be over.
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