Bring down voice price cap officially from N50 to N20, NATCOMS tells NCC

President of the National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers (NATCOMS), Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo has called on the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to look at bringing down the price cap of N50 per minute to N20 per minute, since the cap had been on since 2001.

In an interview weekend, he said data tariff, voice tariff and other communication services should be reviewed downwards to deepen uptake of internet and broadband penetration.

He said leaving the price cap officially unchanged even though it has come down is very bad. He expressed worry why NCC will be swift in working to review interconnection rate it did last four years ago; 2013, leaving voice price cap it set last in 2001.

Further investigations showed that market forces pioneered by Glo telecoms crashed the cap from N50 to about N20.

But some sector analysts and lawyers who bared their mind on the matter said because it has not been reviewed downward some networks are still relying on that to warn subscribers of lower credit level that is not able to activate a call even when a subscriber is having an amount that is not up to N50.

However, in some cases, after the warning, the call may go ahead and terminate when credit ends.