Commission to sanction MTN, Airtel, Glo over data migration

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November 26, 2015 2:57 PM

The NCC said it had continued to receive complaints from subscribers on automatic migration of their data bundles to Pay-As-You-Go billing upon the depletion of their data bundle.

Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, NCC CEO/EVC

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has reportedly said that it would sanction MTN, Airtel and Globacom for flouting its directive on automatic migration to Pay-As-You-Go bundle.

According to PunchNG, the Commission made this known in its ‘2015 3Q Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Report’.

In the report, the NCC said it had continued to receive complaints from subscribers on automatic migration of their data bundles to Pay-As-You-Go billing upon the depletion of their data bundle.

READ: Regulator says MTN, Globacom, Etisalat guilty of violating porting process

“Consequently and pursuant to section 53(1) of the NCA 2003, the commission on the 3rd of August, 2015 directed all mobile service operators to comply with the data bundle directives. That where a subscriber’s data bundle account is fully depleted before the due date, the service providers should notify the subscriber via SMS, giving information regarding the tariff/billing rate for automatic migration. That all service providers should henceforth stop auto-migration of subscriber’s data service to the Pay-As-You-Go account upon the depletion of the data bundle account, except with the express consent and authorisation of the subscriber via SMS,” the Commission said.

The NCC further added that a follow-up compliance check was conducted and that revealed that Etisalat was the only telecom operator to be in compliance with the directive.

The NCC has clamped down on telecoms operators over the past few months with the Commission’s N1.4 trillion fine on MTN for failing to deactivate unregistered SIMs being the most prominent.

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