The National Association of Telecommunications Subscribers, NATCOMS, has called on the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, to review downwards voice call tariffs for subscribers.
The President of NATCOMS, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, who made the call during an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria, today in Lagos, spoke ahead of the NCC planned a stakeholders’ forum on the determination of mobile voice termination rate for the industry scheduled for tomorrow in Lagos.
Termination rate is the amount or charge which one telecommunications operator charges another for terminating call(s) on its network.
The NATCOMS chief canvassed a reduction in the termination rate since it is directly related to tariffs operators would charge subscribers.
He explained: ”To call for stakeholders’ views on the matter is a welcome development because the industry must appreciate the fact that we need to revisit the services from time to time. Whether the stakeholders will agree to increase or decrease is another matter. It is a good development and NCC is doing its regulatory duties.
”The mobile call rates should actually reduce because that is what is now left for the ordinary man in the street, the rural dwellers and the farmers in the villages. The rural dwellers depend on voice calls, but when it now comes to other services; that is when you start looking at urban centres. For me, they should at least leave it as it is, if they cannot reduce it,” Ogunbanjo added.
While noting that that the current call rate in the country is neither the highest nor the lowest globally, he still expressed the desire of subscribers to experience a situation where there is a reduction in the call rate because of the population and size of telecommunications market in the country.
”We should look at N12 per minute and NCC should also look at a reduction in the price cap because we have maintained the same price cap since 2001, that is 17 years of N50 per minute,” Ogunbanjo canvassed.
