27m SIMs risk disconnection on Sunday • Subscribers spend N444.6b on calls in Q1 • NATCOMS seeks extension of deadline, NCC declines TWO days to the deadline set by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), an investigation by The Guardian has revealed that about 27 million Subscribers Identification Modules (SIMs) may be disconnected if they are not registered by June 30. As at Monday, virtually none of the telecommunications operators has confidently recorded 100 per cent compliance from its subscribers on the registration of their SIMs. This is despite various campaigns, advertorials and freebies offered by the service providers to woo subscribers to confirm the status of their SIMs and if not registered, to do so. Besides, despite the continuous drop in the quality of service, subscribers in the country might have spent N444.6 billion through phone calls in the first four months of 2013. Indeed, latest statistics from the NCC revealed that Nigeria, as in the first quarter of the year, has 164 million connected lines with 119 million being active. Ahead of the SIM registration deadline, operators had sent several short message services (SMS) to subscribers to remind them of the deadline, in addition to various telemarketing calls. MTN for instance claimed to have wooed its unregistered subscribers with a gift of free airtime of N400. But going by investigations, virtually all the players, including Airtel, Globacom, Etisalat, even the troubled Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), Visafone, Starcomms and Multilinks put together may lose close to 27 million subscribers from their networks.
Posted on: Fri, 28 Jun 2013 07:45:36 +0000
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