Telecommunications subscribers in Nigeria are daily faced with poor network service delivery that makes it impossible for them to make or receive calls.
Their problems are exacerbated by drop calls and lack of sustainability of calls, unsolicited text messages at odd hours, unsolicited telemarketing calls, deceptive broadband speed adverts by some service providers and failure of service delivery.
Others challenges include insufficient customer care lines, unrelenting sales promotion, despite poor network service delivery, non-compensation to consumers for loss of airtime and poor service delivery, and network insecurities characterised by uncontrollable interruptions on networks by unidentifiable third parties.
Operators on the hand have claimed that poor quality of service provisioning is not deliberate citing the myriad of challenges confronting and limiting their ability to deliver effective quality service.
They said these include: multiple regulation and taxation; Illegal access denials and site shut-outs; inadequate power supply; lack of incentives to drive service penetration to the remote and rural areas; rent seeking charges for permits; and approvals necessary for deployment; security; and so on.
Elsewhere, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has tried all forms of strategies to ensure that qualitative network is rendered to customers in the country.
In 2012, the Commission began to impose sanctions on operators for failing to meet with the required level of service provision.
It also came up with Mobile Number Portability (MNP), another way out of service inadequacies as customers can now have the option of either sticking to their failing network providers or testing new waters with other service providers without having to buy new SIM cards.
Despite these interventions, there seems not to have been any improvement in services rather it got worse as the number of subscriber base increased.
It goes to show that solving the problems of poor quality of service provisioning requires a collaborative effort of all the stakeholders in the telecom industry.
We are happy that the Ministry of Communications Technology partnership with the Ministry of Works, have developed new Right of Way (RoW) guidelines for Federal Government roads to enable operators have unencumbered means of laying OFC which is critical for infrastructure development and quality of service.
What is very important now is for the federal government to muster enough political will to remove arbitrary charges and eradicate multiple taxations that impede telecoms development across the nation.
Nigerians must also protect telecom infrastructure because they are critical national resource and the heart of communication.