House Commends MTN’s Effort On Quality of Service Improvement

L-R: Hon. Olumide Osoba, Member, Hon. Usman Bawa, Ag. Chairman, Hon. Abiodun Awoleye, all of the House Committee on Communications listening to Mr. Akinwale Goodluck, Corporate Services Executive, MTN as he explains a point to the House of Rep Members, when they visited the MTN Network Monitoring Centre, Ojota, on a working tour in Lagos on Monday......

By ROMMY IMAH

As part of its oversight functions, Nigeria’s House of Representatives Committee on Communications yesterday undertook a facility tour of the MTN Network Management Centre (NMC) in Ojota, Lagos to see for themselves the state of the facilities put in place by the GSM giants.

At a press conference soon after the tour, the Committee said it was satisfied with what it saw at the Network Management Centre, noting that MTN had what it takes to provide uninterrupted quality of service for its subscribers across the country.

It should be recalled that only recently, the Nigerian Communications Commission, the body charged with the regulation of the country’s telecommunications industry threatened to sanction some telecom service providers if they failed to improve on their service quality.

But speaking to journalists yesterday, Acting Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Communications, Honourable Usman Bawa said it was convinced by the facilities it saw at the Network Monitoring Centre that MTN was working hard to improve on its quality of telecommunication services in the country.

According to him, “we received so many complaints from telecom subscribers on the poor quality of service from operators. From what we have seen today, we are convinced that MTN is working so hard to improve on its network. I, therefore, call on other network operators to emulate MTN in this regard. On our part, we hope to keep doing our oversight functions too to all other telecoms service providers.”

On the issue of poor quality of service being experienced at the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, Honourable Bawa said that the report has been brought to the Committee by the NCC and that the NCC and the Ministry of the Environment are both on top of the matter. He expressed optimism that the issue will soon be resolved.

Bawa who was flanked by other members of the Committee at the conference remarked that his committee in conjunction with the NCC are working together to ensure that those who vandalise telecoms infrastructure in the country are prosecuted accordingly.

The lower chamber of the National Assembly he said was not unaware of the challenges faced by telecoms service providers especially with regard to multiple taxation. He assured that an Act will soon be passed in the House to allow for streamlining and unification of taxation and regulation in the industry.