The Congolese team led by CTRA’s Network Director, Benjamin
Mouandza, spent three days at the NCC Head Office in Abuja, where it was
exposed to key result-oriented regulatory activities, frameworks, programmes
and policies of NCC, with the objective to explore how such operational
frameworks could be adapted by the African nation noted for its huge rainforest
reserves.
In the letter written to the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC)
of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, the Congloese regulator had indicated interest to
gain more insights into three areas of NCC’s regulatory activities, namely,
management of issues associated with Quality of Service (QoS), SIM Boxing and
Call Masking, as well as telecom equipment type-approval process.
In response to the request, Danbatta had graciously accepted
to host the team and further directed relevant departments of NCC, including
Special Duties (SD); Technical Standards and Network Integrity (TSNI); and the
Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement (CME) directorates to interact with the
team to provide necessary information sharing that may be useful to the
Congolese counterpart.
Addressing the CTRA team, the NCC’s Director, TSNI, Bako
Wakil, spoke extensively on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) institued by
NCC on QoS and how these KPIs are measured and monitored by the Commission
toward ensuring improved service delivery to the Nigeria’s ever-growing
telecoms consumers. He said this also helped to improve Quality of Experience
(QoE) of the consumers.
On type-approval process, Wakil stated that the Commission
had developed a rigorous type-approval process to ensure that telecoms
equipment, including terminal devices, manufactured in line with international
standards and specifications are brought into the country. The “NCC is serious
about type-approval process like other processes, because non-type approved
devices and equipment which are also not manufactured to international
standards and specifications have negative implications for quality of service
delivery on the networks,” he said.
Wakil also spoke extensively, to the admiration of the
Congolese team, on call masking and highlighted measures the NCC had put in
place to address the menace. He described call masking as “the practice of
sending international calls to an operator but disguising the calls as if they
were local by sending the calls on the local interconnect route with a local
number in the national numbering plan instead of the original international
calling number.”
In a related presentation to the visiting team on SIM boxing
fraud and efforts being taken by the NCC to combat the menace, NCC’s Director,
CME, Ephraim Nwokonneya, spoke on the problems created by fraudulent practice
of SIM Boxing, including threat to national security, loss of revenue to
service providers and the government. Additionally, he asserted the
anti-competitive practices associated with such acts among licensees as well as
the general economic implications so evident in revenue loss.
However, Nwokonneya itemised solutions to SIM Boxing fraud
from a regulatory perspective. He declared that regulators can deploy anti-SIM
boxing and call masking solutions, be proactive and effective in monitoring and
enforcement, collaboration with the industry and law enforcement agencies,
capacity building through training and skill acquisition programmes, as well as
the review of the Enforcement Regulations and enabling laws.
More importantly, Nwokonneya told the Congolese telecoms
regulator team that collaboration between the regulator and the industry is
required to effectively combat the menace of SIMBox Fraud, Call Masking and
Call Refiling in conjunction with deployment of technological solution and well
trained staff.
From the presentations, it was made clear that the scale of
call masking and SIMBoxing has been on the downward decline in Nigeria while
the number of complaints from subscribers on incorrectly displayed calling
numbers has also reduced substantially. To prove that NCC processes emplaced to
combat the menace are succeeding, Nwokonneya stated that there has been a
significant and noticeable improvement in the display of correct international
calling numbers into Nigeria networks.
The NCC Directors also reiterated that the Commission is
also taking strategic actions on SIM Registration, the National Identification
Number (NIN) and the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) linkage policy. The NCC
team informed the visitors that a maximum of four SIM numbers are permissible
to be registered per subscriber per network requirement. This is another
measure deployed by the NCC to tackle SIMBoxing which usually requires multiple
SIMs to flourish.
The NCC team emphasised that the combination of regulatory
action and deployment of technology solutions have helped to put the menace of
call masking and SIMBoxing in the Nigeria’s telecoms sector under check.
Commenting on the benefits of the visit, CTRA’s Mouandza,
said the choice made by the Congolese regulator to visit NCC on a benchmarking
tour has been worthwhile. “We have come to understand how the regulator in
Nigeria has been handling some salient regulatory issues and matters in the
country as it relates to telecoms. In the course of this visit, I can say that
our objective has been achieved. The experience has been very rich, we have
learnt many things. We thank the EVC and his team for accepting to host us. We
are more positioned now to replicate some of the things we have learnt in our
telecoms market back home,” he said.
The Congolese officials had practical demonstrations of the
issues earlier discussed, especially the nature of technologies that have been
deployed by the NCC to independently and remotely monitor, measure and validate
QoS on the networks of mobile operators in the country.
It will be recalled that the visit by the Congolese team
came barely a month after the NCC hosted officials from Sierra Leone’s National
Telecommunications Commission (NATCOM), who equally visited NCC to benchmark
the Nigeria’s telecom regulator’s policies, programmes and regulatory
activities.
Over the years, the NCC has constantly received delegations
from telecoms regulators in Africa and this trend has remained a major boost
for Nigeria’s global ranking as a model in telecommunications regulation.
Suffice it to say, that, these benchmarking visits have eloquently reinforced
NCC’s leadership status in operational efficiency, collaborative partnership,
and commitment to intra-African solidarity in the telecommunications sphere.
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