- ‘ATCON Honours NCC for Consumer Initiative’
Not less than eight million telecommunication mobile lines (8Million) have been reserved as untouchable from unsolicited telemarketing and unwanted messages, this the industry regulator, Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has said.
The Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, made this known at the maiden edition of the Nigerian Technology Innovation and Telecommunications Awards (NTITA) in Lagos.
NTITA was organised by the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) and powered by Instinctwave.
According to the EVC, the commission introduced Don Not Disturb (DND) about 16 months ago as part of NCC’s Consumer Year Initiative, which aim at curtailing network operators from bombarding their subscribers with unwanted messages.
“We stepped in to address this issue in july 2015 and 16 months down the line, about 8 million subscribers have activated the 2442 Do-Not-Disturb (DND) code which was introduced for the networks subscribers to activate for them to stop their network operators from disturbing them with unwanted messages.”
“We ensure that every operator comply with the directive to put on the code on their network system which they did. so it is now a matter of choice you as a subscriber irrespective of your network once you activate the 2442 code no unwanted message with drop on your line except the one you subscribe for.”
At the industry stakeholders’ forum, the commission was presented with Regulator of the Year award. This, the EVC said was a well deserve award borne out of the steps the commission has taken in recent time to address some of the consumer and operators challenges in other to foster a viable environment for both the operators and the subscribers.
”More Nigerians are accessing the 622 code to lodge their complaints, and I am happy to say that we have succeeded to resolve their complaints,” he said
Speaking further on the sideline with journalist after receiving the award, Danbatta noted that the commission is still optimistic that Nigeria will attain the 2015-2018 30% National broadband Plan(NBP) stating that a review to fast track the INFRACO regional plan for broadband is ongoing.
“I can assure you that before December 2018 the industry will grow internet broadband penetration to the set 30% penetration as there are reviewed plan which will be introduce to the industry soon.”
Earlier, ATCON President, Olusola Eniola who shared light on why the motive of the maiden Edition of the award to various outstanding companies and individual who through their initiatives and services are making contributory growth to the sector said,
“To foster healthy competition in the Nigerian telecom industry – ATCON took the initiative to give awards to some government institutions and telecom and IT companies that have led innovation and creativity in the last few years in order to reposition the efficiency of the industry.
“We hope to drive further investment into the sector – it is believed that the adoption of creativity and innovation would automatically lead to further investment in the sector both locally and internationally. New innovations require further investments for its continuity and ATCON plans to use this reward system in the form of giving awards to establishments who see innovation as a key driver of the industry and are acknowledged and motivated to do more.
“We also decided to give the most authoritative and recognized awards to innovative and deserving individuals because our industry has contributed a lot to Nigeria’ GDP.
Our thinking is that if we decide to ignore the contribution that our sector has made to the development of Nigeria by not recognizing the actors that made it possible what we are saying invariably is that we are ungrateful to their concerted efforts in changing the story of our industry by the Nigerian government. We hope with this initiative of rewarding excellence, the Nigerian government would pay more attention to our sector by removing all barriers that are militating against the growth of our industry.”
