The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), on Tuesday handed down varying degrees of sanctions on telecoms services providers engaging on clandestine practices including call-masking, call-refiling and SIM-Boxing.
This followed weeks of intelligent surveillance and even face-to-face questioning of named defaulters who were shown clear evidences of their acts and asked to provide their defences on why they should not be sanctioned accordingly.
In a statement issued yesterday by the Director Public Affairs, Mr. Tony Ojobo, the Commission said after going through their responses, vide a painstaking investigation process which included collaboration with the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the Department of State Services (DSS), the Commission has imposed a range of sanctions on licensees involved in the fraudulent practice.
Business Hilights had last week, reported that NCC is likely to announce sanctions this week on defaulting interconnect firms; (See http://businesshilights.com.ng/ncc-may-announce-sanctions-on-six-interconnect-companies-next-week/).
The sanctions which came in ranges however, saw the suspension of the Interconnect Clearinghouse License issued to Medallion Communications Limited for a period of 90 (ninety) days, in the first instance; Issuance of a strong warning to Interconnect Clearinghouse Nigeria Limited; Disconnection of Information Connectivity Solutions Limited (ICSL) and Solid Interconnectivity Services Limited from all networks, until they regularize their operations.
Others include issuance of letters to Exchange Telecoms Limited, NiconnX Limited and Breeze Micro Limited, cautioning them against engaging in the fraudulent practice; and, Barring of over 750,000 numbers assigned to several Private Network Links (PNL) and Local Exchange Operator (LEO) licensees, which number ranges were found to have been utilized for the practice.
According to NCC, “The sanctioned entities were found to be directly and indirectly complicit in several infractions, including, covertly allowing organisations with expired licences to transit calls, failure to undertake due diligence on parties seeking to interconnect, deliberately turning a blind eye to masking infractions by interconnect partners, and using a licence issued to another organisation to bring-in and terminate international calls which were masked as local calls to other operators”.
Ojobo noted further that “Regarding the barring of numbers, over 750,000 individual numbers across the nation, made up of about 31 number ranges have been barred. The licensees whose numbers have been barred are: Vezeti Communications Services Limited, Voix Networks Limited, Mobitel Limited, Peace Global Satellite Communications Limited, ABG Communications Limited, Vodacom Business Africa (Nigeria) Limited, Swift Telephone Networks Limited, QVODA Telecoms Limited, Wireless Telecoms Limited and Emcatel Networks Limited. The Commission found that some of these were terminating millions of minutes, whereas they only have very few active customers”.
NCC recalled that it had before now, been inundated with complains of call masking and as a regulator had a duty to perform in restoring sanity into the system.
It further noted that “The Commission is pleased to note that the incidence of call masking has significantly reduced since it commenced a multi-faceted approach to address the menace. The Commission hereby informs all stakeholders that the actions so far taken are just the first stage of the exercise. The second stage which has now commenced, will focus on the Mobile Network Operators and other persons involved in SIM-Boxing”.
“The aim of the Commission is to completely stamp out the fraudulent practice in the overall interest of all Nigerians. Accordingly, every service provider that has been sanctioned still has an opportunity to correct the identified anomalies and satisfy the Commission that it should be allowed to continue to operate in Nigeria. The Commission reserves the right to revoke the licence of such service providers where they fail to take the necessary corrective measures,” NCC averred.
