The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has assured telecom subscribers in the country that it is on top of the interconnect debt issues and is handling it delicately within the purview of the regulatory provisions to ensure the quality of experience (QoE) is not acutely affected.

The assurance is coming on the heel of a reported N10 billion interconnect dispute between MTN and Globacom, two of Nigeria’s biggest Mobile Network Operators. It was reported MTN activated a partial restriction of call termination from the Globacom network because of  accumulated interconnect debt, which Glo has not shown any commitment to off-set, despite several meetings to resolve the dispute.
The telecom regulatory body, which gave the assurance in a statement issued in Abuja, also assured the subscribers that they will not experience any service disruption as a result of the ongoing regulatory intervention towards resolving the rising interconnectivity debts among telecoms operators in Nigeria.
Quoting the Executive Vice Chairman of the Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta, the statement said, as a consumer-centric telecoms regulatory authority, the NCC is keen on ensuring that the consumers continue to enjoy uninterrupted service while efforts are being made to address the issue of indebtedness in the industry.
The EVC said while regulatory approval on permission for disconnection was granted to creditor networks late last year, as a last resort towards resolving the huge interconnection debts threatening the health and sustainability of the industry, the Commission is ensuring that no telecoms subscriber is disconnected.
The statement reads: “Though the Commission granted approval to MTN’s request to disconnect debtor networks from its network in line with Section 100 of the Nigerian Communications Act (NCA) 2003, the Guidelines on Procedure for Granting Approval to Disconnect Telecommunications Operators, 2012 and other regulatory instruments, what is happening now is that the creditor networks are restricting certain services to their debtor networks in form of one-way disconnection.
“It is one-way disconnection because, as a Regulator, we prevented total disconnection; not doing that would be frustrating for the consumers. So, we have ensured that subscribers on the affected debtor networks are able to receive calls and text messages from creditor networks. This means they might not be able to make seamless calls or send text messages to the creditor’s network at all times because of restriction of access to debtor networks, pending when satisfactory payment plans are reached with respect to the Interconnect indebtedness. This is to prevent further accumulation of interconnect debt by the debtor networks”.