The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has sanctioned three out
of the four major network operators in the country – MTN Nigeria,
Globacom and Airtel – the sum of N647.5 million for breach of key
performance indicators (KPIs) and poor quality of service for the month
of January 2014. It however gave Etisalat a clean bill as it met all the
set KPIs.
The telecoms regulator, in letters dated February 19, 2014, addressed
to each of the affected companies, said after collating statistics from
the network operating centres of the operators in the month of January,
discovered that the services provided by MTN, Airtel and Globacom fell
below the KPI published by it in 2013.
The letters, which were obtained exclusively by THISDAY from a source
in the Ministry of Communications Technology, will be delivered to the
three network operators today.
A breakdown of the sanctions indicate that Globacom was penalised,
N277.5 million for three breaches, while MTN and Airtel got sanctioned
N185 million each for two breaches.
According to the letters conveying the breaches and sanctions, the
NCC set four critical KPIs – Call Setup Success Rate (CSSR), Drop Call
Rate (DCR), Traffic Channel Congestion (TCHCONG) and Stand Alone
Dedicated Control Channel Congestion (SDCONG).
With a target of 98 per cent for CSSR, MTN, Airtel, and Globacom
failed to meet the target in January. They scored 96.85 per cent, 96.99
per cent and 96.89 per cent respectively.
In the DCR category, NCC set a target of 1 per cent. The audit report
referred to by NCC in its letter stated that for the month of January,
MTN and Globacom failed to meet the target, while Airtel exceeded the
target with a score of 0.84 per cent.
For the SDCONG KPI, with a target of 0.20 per cent, Airtel and
Globacom failed to meet the target, scoring 0.40 per cent and 0.58 per
cent respectively, while MTN exceeded the target with a score of 0.17
per cent.
For the last KPI, TCHCONG, with a target of 2 per cent, all the three
networks exceeded the target, as MTN scored 0.55 per cent; Globacom –
0.79 per cent; and Airtel – 0.79 per cent.
In summary, MTN failed to meet the targets set in the Quality of Service
Regulations for the CSSR and DCR computations; Globacom failed to meet
the targets set for CSSR, DCR and SDCONG computations; while Airtel
failed to meet the targets for CSSR and SDCONG computations.
The operators are expected to pay the sanctions on or before March 7, 2014.
Should they fail to pay the sanctions within the stipulated deadline,
each of them will be liable to pay N2.5 million daily, as long as the
contravention persists.
Apart from the monetary sanctions, all the three operators were
barred by NCC from selling new SIM cards throughout the month of March
2014, with effect from March 1 to March 31; barred from churning or
deleting from their networks inactive (or non-revenue generating SIMs)
during the period March 1 to March 31; barred from supplying new SIM
cards from their warehouses to dealers or third parties during the same
period; and stopped from all promotions until the identified KPIs
considered are positively addressed.
The letters further stated: “NCC shall carry out an audit of MTN,
Globacom and Airtel on March 1 and also on March 31to ensure no sale of
SIM cards or churning of non-revenue generating SIMs occurred during the
period, either using their network provisioning systems or directly on
the HLR.
“Any deviation or alteration of patterns (in terms of average daily
number of provisioning) in the remaining days of February 2014, compared
to your regular provisioning rate, shall be construed a breach of this
direction.”
From this audit of the performance of the telecoms operators, the
Ministry of Communications Technology source confirmed that Etisalat met
all KPIs for the month of January and was therefore not sanctioned by
NCC.
NCC had in a letter last December issued a notice of intention to
sanction the telecoms firms, if their quality of service did not improve
by December 31, 2013.
It had warned: “If the quality of service does not improve by 31st of
December 2013, the commission will be compelled to direct operators to,
amongst others, suspend the activation of new SIMs and subscribers
until such an operator can prove that it has met the key performance
indicators specified in the regulations.”
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