NCC To Sanction MTN, Globacom, Etisalat For Violating line porting time

NCC – The Nigerian Communications Commission has said MTN Nigeria, Globacom and Etisalat violated their Mobile Number Portability process time obligations in the third quarter of 2015.

The NCC, in its ‘2015 3Q Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Report’ published on its website on Thursday, said it had resolved to monitor operators and take appropriate actions to address the increasing cases of port request rejections.

The commission said, “Consequent upon the above, series of compliance checks were carried out regarding timer violations by donor operators with respect to ‘validation and deactivation responses,’ which have timelines of two hours and an hour, respectively.”

On Etisalat’s alleged timer violation, the NCC said it observed an infraction in a corporate port request of over 63 lines belonging to Neoconde Energy Limited.

It said, “The company had initiated a corporate port out request from Etisalat to Airtel on 7th August, 2015 at 9.13am but was partially completed as at 1.52pm on the same day. As a result, these subscribers were unable to receive calls from Etisalat’s network.”

The regulator said it also observed a timer deactivation violation by MTN regarding a corporate port request of over 109 lines belonging to Nigerian Breweries Plc.

The commission said, “The company had initiated a corporate port out request from MTN to Glo via lead MSISDN: 07036735494 on 11th August, 2015 at 1.20pm but was partially completed as at 11.22am on 14th August, 2015.

“As a result, these subscribers were not able to receive calls from MTN subscribers.

“MTN breached the timer of two hours for validation of four port requests from the NPC as stated in the MNP Business Rules.”

The NCC further said it observed a timer validation violation by Glo regarding eleven individual and one corporate port requests.

“Glo had breached the two hours allowable for validation of six port requests from the NPC as stated in the MNP Business Rules,” the commission said.

It said Glo validated one of these port requests over nine hours after receipt from the MNP administrator.

It added, “Glo also breached the one allowable hour for the donor to deactivate 147 ported out lines belonging to Reckitt Limited consistent with provisions of the MNP Business Rules.

“All the above timer violations are currently undergoing enforcement actions.”

Also, the NCC said it had continued to receive complaints from subscribers on automatic migration of data bundle package to Pay-As-You Go billing on depletion of the data bundle.

The commission said its follow-up compliance check showed that “Etisalat is in compliance with direction #1 and direction #2 of the Commissions; Globacom is in compliance with direction #1, as subscribers receive SMS detailing tariff rate for auto-migration on depletion of their data bundle. However, Globacom failed to obtain express consent from subscribers before migration to PAYG and, therefore, in violation of direction #2.”

It added, “MTN is in compliance with direction #1 but failed to highlight the tariff rate for PAYG billing. In addition, data service is not suspended on depletion of the data bundle account, even without an authorisation via an SMS from the subscriber. Airtel is not in compliance with the above directions.

“Consequent upon the above, the commission has issued a notice of intention to sanction the concerned service providers.”

Source: PUNCH