MTN Nigeria responds to sanction calls
MTN Nigeria says it is surprised by threats from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to impose sanctions on the group for poor service to subscribers.
Telecommunications authorities on Thursday (3 May 2012) warned the Nigerian affiliate of SA mobile operator, MTN, that it might look to impose sanctions for alleged poor service to subscribers.
“NCC’s statement to the press yesterday came as a surprise to us. The incident under reference is a service disruption that some of our customers experienced on the 1 May 2012,” MTN Nigeria said in a statement on Friday.
“There was a power related incident at our Ikoyi Switch late on 1 May. It was quickly rectified but we realized that all the affected customers would not feel the full impact of the restoration for a few hours. Some customers continued to experience difficulty with calling and texting. These issues were largely localized to parts of Lagos,” it continued.
“A letter was dispatched to the NCC on the 2nd of May informing the NCC and explaining what we had done to normalize. Affected customers were also informed by sms/Twitter/Facebook and radio announcements. We offered our apologies,” the group said.
MTN stressed that by the afternoon of 2 May, service had been fully restored with additional smses being sent to customers to confirm the group’s position.
“Quality of service in Nigeria is an industry-wide challenge. It is caused by a combination of factors related to demand still outstripping supply in terms of infrastructure and local environmental challenges. No network in Nigeria has invested more in infrastructure than MTN. This year alone, MTN is investing $1.3 Billion in the network with a view to upgrading and increasing its capacity,” MTN Nigeria said.
MTN said in March (2012) – in its financial results presentation for the year ended December, 2011 – that its operations in Nigeria faced a challenging year as the entire market was negatively affected by the process of SIM registration.
“Aggressive price competition had a negative impact on gross connections and network quality again became a focus area for the regulator as higher elasticity from lower pricing impacted traffic demand across almost all of the major networks,” it said.
However, the company increased its subscriber base by 7.7% to 41.6 million, out of a total subscriber base of 164.5 million, and ended the year with a more stabilised market share of 50% in Nigeria.
MTN is also currently fighting off a lawsuit from TurkCell alleging that MTN bribed its way to obtaining a licence in Iran, and accusing the group of human rights abuses. MTN has vehemently denied such charges.
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