All major mobile telephone networks – MTN, Airtel, Globacom and Etisalat – have slashed subscribers’ data volume by half, without a change in price, in order to recoup fines by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
Airtel reduced Blackberry subscription data from 80 megabytes (MB) for N100 to 40MB.
Glo Bolt data plan crashed from 1,600MB to 800MB for N2,000 monthly.
Rising from several years of regulatory slumber, NCC wielded the big in January 2014 after its deadline expired on December 3 last year for the networks to improve the quality of service.
MTN was fined about N500 million, Airtel (N270 million) and Globacom (N180 million). This was in addition to other penalties.
The sanctions were worse than those of May 2012 when the NCC fined the networks a total N1.2 billion for failing in different key performance indices (KPIs). MTN and Etisalat paid the highest penalty of N360 million each.
Late last year, the House of Representatives initiated a probe of the report that MTN makes about N2.7 billion monthly from arbitrary deductions for its caller tunes service.
The networks claimed that the data volume slash is to stop non-blackberry users from using blackberry subscriptions on other devices.
But blackberry users told TheNiche that data volume is too small at 80MB for N100.
“Usually one knows how long a data subscription should last considering the amount of pages one opens and how heavy it is with images and videos. The Airtel 40MB doesn’t last up to 15 minutes.
“And once the data get exhausted, they quickly make a clean sweep of your airtime balance,” said Guy Austins, a subscriber to Airtel data plan.
“Why should a blackberry user get over 1.5GB for N2,000 while a non blackberry user gets between 260MB and 400MB for an equal tarrif? And service providers add extra two seconds to all your calls before you hang up so as to get more money from users. This must stop.”
To verify data network providers claim they allot, TheNiche monitored it with a software that calculates how much a subscriber uses.
While the monitoring device was still indicating 19.26MB used data, the allotted 40MB was already exhausted and the airtime balance on the telephone exhausted.
Using the same blackberry plan on a Tecno android handset with an in-built data usage calculator and limiter, 16MB had not been used before the data service was disconnected, even when it indicated that 40MB had been allocated.
Other networks, especially MTN, now use pop up text messages to trick customers into subscribing for services they do not know about or wish to subscribe to.
Instead of the usual SMS confirmation response method where subscribers get a text message advertising the package, and respond by replying the SMS, it is now a pop up, with a yes or no option. One can mistakenly choose yes.
They sell subscribers’ telephone numbers to third parties who send junk and unsolicited messages. In most cases, each yes one mistakenly presses withdraws a non-refundable N100 from airtime account.
“Often times such annoying pop ups come in the middle of the night and when you call the customer care officers, all they do is apologise for the inconvenience. But for how long would one stay inconvenienced?” wondered Matthew Eze, a subscriber to MTN.
