Nigerian Committee Recommends 12 Month Ban on New GSM Subscriptions

Nigeria's House of Representatives has recommended that the country's GSM operators be barred from selling new SIM card connections for twelve months - so that the networks do not continue to oversell their capacity and quality of service. A parliamentary committee was set up to investigate the poor services it claimed were being provided by mobile phone operators.

The report, issued last week criticized the telecoms regulator, the NCC and the Ministry of Communications for poor planning and controls - and the operators for continuing to connect new customers before the network capacity problems had been fixed.

The report said: "It is important to note that the GSM companies are selling services they do not have. The poor quality of telecom services cannot be corrected by incompetent planners. They would only exacerbate an already bad situation because of lack of know how."

Both the regulator and the government Ministry were criticized for poor management and in some situations for illegal activity.

The committees recommendations are not binding, so it is not yet clear if the 12 month ban on new subscriptions would come into effect - or when.

Posted to the site on 19th November 2007