Daily Independent Online.
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Wednesday, June 30, 2004.
Abia GSM subscribers threaten to dump MTN over poor
services
By Uche Nwosu
Special
Correspondent, Umuahia
MTN subscribers in Abia State have
threatened to abandon the company following its strident poor services.
In both Umuahia and
Aba, it was learnt that MTN has greatly disappointed its subscriber as its
audio quality is always poor.
As at Tuesday, MTN
lines have persistently dropped as subscriber make calls thereby disrupting
easy flow of communication and loss of money arising from paying for such
dropped calls. “Despite this, the subscribers will also be charged for
making the failed call which is not their own faults,” a subscriber
confirmed.
The situation was
made worse by the scarcity of recharge cards since the past two weeks. This has
paralysed business activities as subscribers of MTN have not been able to reach
out to their business partners or relations outside because they cannot reach
they on phone.
The chairman of the
Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) Abia State council, Mr. Ambrose Nwachukwu
bemoaned the epileptic service MTN offers to its clients in the state, urging
the company to either brace to the challenges of modern mobile communication or
fold up.
Some of the dealers
in Aba and Umuahia described the service rendered by the MTN in the state as a
big fraud. “If their system is bad,” said Okechukwu Obasi, a
subscriber “what they ought to do is to send their team of engineers to
Abia to effect the necessary repairs instead of allowing their customers to go
through hell by given them a disjointed service.”
Ugochukwu Nwankwo
urged the Federal Government to revolutionise the nation’s mobile
communication industry to avoid some multi-nationals from taking Nigerians for
a ride.
Chidi Okafor, another subscriber, explained that he was
pained not because of the drought in recharge cards or sudden rise of the price
of the recharge cards from N1,500 to N1,585 but by the poor audio quality in
MTN system.
