Commercial banks in the country are owing telecommunications companies over N17 billion following the regulator’s suspension of its Determination on Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) Pricing last year.
Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta who disclosed this during the week said NCC recently revised the Determination on the USSD in furtherance of its mandate to protect the interests of consumers and support a robust telecommunications sector,
Speaking at ATCON’s virtual forum on “Meeting the Interests of Government, Consumers and Telecoms Companies in the Era of Covid-19 and Post Covid-19 Pandemic for Digital Economy Development”, Danbatta noted that the Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Ali Isa Ibrahim Pantami had already been briefed on the development with a view to ensuring a quick settlement of the debt.
Explaining the Commission’s efforts at resolving consumer-related issues, he noted that when the Commission introduced the Do-Not-Disturb (DND) code in 2015, less than 500,000 people activated the code, but there are now 22,722,366 lines on the DND.
Danbatta further stated that ninety-eight per cent (98%) of the total service-related complaints received from telecoms consumers within a 15-month period, spanning January 2019 to April 2020, have been successfully resolved by the Commission.
Segun Fatuase
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