Four of Nigeria’s leading telecom operators have been sanctioned by the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, for having pre-registered SIM cards in their systems.
The NCC identified the affected GSM network providers as MTN Nigeria, Airtel Nigeria, Globacom Nigeria and Etisalat Nigeria.
They were sanctioned and asked to variously pay N120.4 million for failing to fully comply with the directive of the Commission to deactivate pre-registered and defective customer SIM cards.
While MTN, which controls over 62 million subscribers on its network, was asked to Pay N102.2 million; Globacom was slammed with N7.4 million; Etisalat N7 million and Airtel N3.8 million.
The NCC Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Umar Danbatta, by Head of Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement, Efosa Idehen, and Head of Legal and Regulatory Services, Yetunde Akinloye, said the fines to be paid by each of the companies were listed in letters dated August 26 and 28 addressed specifically to the operators.
NCC explained that in continuation of its monitoring activities it placed voice calls to 402 MTN subscribers from among the list of numbers submitted to the telecommunications for deactivation.
Similar exercises were carried out on other operators.
“The numbers called were those whose registrations were incomplete or invalid as regards facial capture and the responses from those affected MTN subscribers was that MTN has neither, through text messages, nor any other means invited them to come forward to validate and update their registration,” the NCC said.
In the letters, the communications industry regulator noted that the monitoring exercise had revealed that the operators were still harbouring activated pre-registered and defective SIMs on their networks.
A copy of the letter addressed to one of the affected companies titled: “Re: Monitoring of Status Compliance with Stakeholders Resolution of August 4, 2015 on Deactivation of Incomplete and Improperly Registered SIM Cards-Notice of Sanction”.
(Premium Times)
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