NCC organises for Value Added Service
Posted by Ebere Obinagwam | 10 years ago | 1,116 times
Nigerian Telecommunication Commission (NCC) was recently in an outing in Lagos with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to discuss and find ways to better Value Added Services (VAS) for Nigerians.
Before the meeting, which was held at Oriental Hotel in Lekki, on Thursday, August 7, Nigerians have complained of unfair and unethical treatment by service providers, as a result of the way they operated their value added services. For this reason, they have been flooding NCC with several petitions with regards to such alleged unethical practices by providers for what they claimed were supposed to be value added services.
Such services, according to them, ranged from unauthorized subscriptions to illegal deduction from subscribers account.
They had complained that more often, they have found unsolicited messages on their phones instructing them to type “yes” in a code, if they wanted to listen more to it, knowing fully well that subscribers could easily, mistakenly press a number on their phones which may turn out to be a “yes”.
In the petitions, many regretted that in most cases people were asked you to press a code for a trial for just one week, after which they would opt out if not satisfied. But they complained that often times, the reverse was always the case as the subscriber would automatically be hooked up without any opportunity to actually opt out.
They also complained of cases where subscribers sent codes for opting out, received text indicating a successful opting out, but of which the individual would realise at the end of the day that the service providers had not done so. They had expected NCC to act because according to them it was unethical practice recognised by the commission.
This was why, speaking at the meeting, especially as it concerned standardisation of short codes, the president of Wireless Application service, Simon Ademilola, spoke on the mobility of subscriber. He said that it has the capability of enhancing the standardisation of short codes because VAS provision impacts heavily on subscriber’s experience, explaining that a clear and explicit authorization/ subscription should be made known to a customer either by voice or by text message.
Simon, said that one of the challenges of standardization of short codes has been the harmonization of codes and USSD, and which was always on determining who should be allocated? He explained that there should be steps towards efficient utilization of short codes thereby building intelligent information and having uniform short codes to all networks and a central data base.
He emphasized the view that VAS access should be to add value and not lottery as many service operators do. “VAS is addition, is not chargeable, is an auto renewal not a concept and not a lottery, is unfair that here in Nigeria, their take it to a lottery while as, in a lottery, a lot must be cast. For companies using it as an advert to market their services, please ensure that as you create code for opting in, you should also create codes for opting out because a customer is always free to opt out and there should be transparency in billings i.e., a notification at the end of a call prior service expiration notice, which should be sent some days of the service.” He stated.
The Executive Commissioner of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Okechukwu Itanyi, was not left out at the session as he commented that the Nigeria telecommunications industry was indeed a success story in the sense that in the last 12years, the industry has witnessed a tremendous growth “you will recall that at the beginning of the telecommunication revolution in Nigeria, we had a meager 1.57 million mobile subscribers in 2002 but today, the subscriber population has increased to more than 130 million.” He stated.
He said, that according to industry experts, mobile value added service is currently worth over 200 million annually with huge potential to accelerate to 500 million US dollars in the next few years.
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