The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is working to ensure that the about 153 million subscribers in the sector are only exposed to about seven tariff plans, especially on data services.
This development is coming against several complaints and confusions that have greeted close to 400 different tariff plans currently in existence. A document sighted by The Guardian shows that there are 369 tariff plans for both voice and data services in the sector, largely from mobile network operators (MNOs) – MTN, Airtel, Globacon and 9mobile.
But the Director of Consumer Affairs, Nigerian Communications Commission ((NCC) Dr Ikechukwu Adinde, at a media capacity training for journalists in Lagos, recently, said the Commission is working to streamline MNOs to seven tariff plans each for data services, which will be bundled in about 100 to include SMS, data and promos, for better understanding of the users and easy monitoring by the NCC.
Indeed, in the sighted document, expectedly, MTN as the largest operator, currently has 159 tariffs, with 14 for voice and 145 for data. Airtel has 27 for voice and 41 for data services.
Globacom has six for voice and 32 for data, while 9mobile with seven voice plans and 97 for data. Adinde revealed that a significant proportion of the tariffs were present as promos and were originally promos that were subsequently converted into tariff plans, which present pricing uncertainty and diversity of plans.
On pricing uncertainty, he explained that in some cases, operators apply different effective tariffs to bonus accounts, resulting in different tariffs for the main account and bonus account. He said this information is not communicated to consumers, which may lead to uninformed decisions.
Explaining the diversity of plans by the MNOs, Adinde said this involves a diverse range of voice and data plans with different pricing tiers, bonuses and bundled services.He said subscribers have options ranging from flat-rate plans to those with access sees, bonuses or bundled data.
According to him, the new move is to enhance consumer satisfaction. The document noted that all current ‘tariffs’ featuring bonuses or promotional elements should be classified strictly as promotions and thus should be submitted to the Consumer Affairs Bureau for quality-of-service evaluation.
According to NCC, telecoms operators will be mandated to explain all benefits or allowances (voice SMS and Data) in a clear, uniform and user-friendly format that is the number of minutes/SMS, cost per minute/SMS, available and total data in MG/GB and validity periods.
“Similar to the India experience, the Commission has placed a limit on the number of tariff plans an operator can offer at any given point in time,” NCC stated.
According to NCC, there is a need for tariff simplifications, which are targeted at bringing transparency to the sector and reducing complaints. NCC stressed that aside from complaints around poor services, tariff extortion is another major challenge of subscribers, “and we are looking at it critically. A new approved set of tariff plans will be unveiled soon.”
On clamour for tariff increase by telecoms operators, the NCC Director of Public Affairs, Reuben Mouka, said the issue remains a sensitive one, saying so many layers of consultations are involved. He said the talk is still on, stressing that it also boils down to the capacity readiness of the operators.
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