AS part of its oversight function over the telecommunications industry, the Enforcement Team of the Nigerian Communications Commission in the course of the year swooped on six illegal telecommunications operators in Lagos earlier in the year and shut down their operations, seized relevant equipment from their premises and arrested some key officers.
The operators are West African Telecommunications Limited, Geni Systems Limited, Next 2G Technologies Limited, Micro Data Associates Limited, Engineering International Networks and De-Haastrup Communications Limited.
Operators in the industry commended the NCC for this role saying that the action portrays it as a serious commission committed to the progress of the industry.
The surveillance earlier carried out by the Commission indicate that these operators were involved in the illegal termination of international calls and had also deployed the use of equipment that had not been type approved by the Commission on the national telecoms network.
The raids were carried out simultaneously by the Enforcement Team in Victoria Island , Ikeja and Surulere. Certain operators among those raided either had no licence from the Commission for some services they were rendering or had no licence at all for any service.
The Head of the Enforcement Team, Mr Funso Fayomi, pointed out that the danger posed by illegal operators was threefold. First, they discourage genuine investors in the telecoms industry who pay their taxes and have the capacity to contribute to the growth of the industry.
Second, by deploying none-type-approved equipment on the network, there is the risk that a number of substandard equipment could be used which would degrade the network and impact negatively on the quality of service subscribers to the network receive.
Third, the underground activities of the illegal operators are likely to attract the patronage of fraudsters who engage in advance fee fraud (also known as 419) and cyber crime.
It would be recalled that the Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, had promised that the Commission would commence the sanitization of the telecom industry this year in implementation of its mandate to maintain a level playing field for all operators.
Apart from this, the commission has been involved in the settlement of interconnect dispute for operators in the industry where such dispute threaten the smooth operation of the calls between networks.
Last year, the dispute between NITEL and the GSM operators of MTN Nigeria and VNetworks was amicably settled by the NCC.
The NCC has also been involved in the organisation of seminars and other workshops for all the stakeholders in the industry for the development of the sector. In June this year, it held one of such seminars on VOiP, at which all stakeholders poured their minds out on what should be the director of thought of the industry on VOiP. The result of the opinions from that seminar forms the basis for the current thinking of the NCC on the depolyment of VOiP services in the country today.
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