telephone lines in the last one week (since August 11) for improper
registration.
It said on Tuesday that at the completion of a "strict monitoring of
mobile operators in the country," it was likely to block 28.61 million
more lines found to be defective, which would bring the total number
of deactivated lines to 38.78 million.
The ongoing deactivation of preregistered Subscribers Identification
Modules cards on the network of mobile operators in the country led to
the blockage of the telephone lines.
Speaking in Lagos, the NCC said the lines were barred due to improper
registration details including poor fingerprints; lack of facial
information and other biometric challenges.
The Head of SIM Registration Project, NCC, Mr. Bashiru Idris, said the
operators and their agents were expected to ensure proper biometric
capturing of subscribers including the fingerprints and facial
outlook, "but they failed to do so in most cases."
According to the commission's Head of Compliance and Monitoring Unit,
Efosa Idehen, the regulator has since the expiration of the ultimatum
given to operators (August 11), been visiting the operators to ensure
compliance.
He said that in September 2014, the NCC discovered that from the SIM
data the operators sent to the commission for hamonisation, some were
defective and had to be returned to the operators for proper and
complete checks.
Idehen said, "18.6 million SIM data were sent back to MTN Nigeria;
10.46 million to Etisalat; 7.49 million to Airtel; and 2.23 million to
Globacom.
"The huge figures are a sign that the operators are partially
committed to the exercise; more so, the NCC monitoring exercise proved
us right."
He said out of the about 18.6 million SIM registration data found to
be defective on MTN network, only about 1.6 million had been barred.
"What MTN actually did was to put the affected subscribers on 'Receive
calls only', which means the subscribers cannot put a call through to
another network. With this, there was no compliance from MTN," Idehen
said.
He also said, "During our visit to Airtel, the telecommunications
service had fully barred 2.3 million lines from their networks. These
are SIM data found to be incomplete. At Globacom, 3.5 million lines
have been barred also from their network.
"Globacom gave assurance of 24 hours to deactivate other lines found
to be defective on their networks.
"Etisalat has barred 3.3 million lines and promised that within 24
hours, others found to be challenging will be removed totally from the
networks."
Idehen said the directive given to the operators was to block any line
found to have incomplete registration, while they (operators) could
later urge the affected subscribers to come and complete their
registration.
He, therefore, said that to check any excesses henceforth, "operators
will be required to send correct data for hamonisation to the
regulator."
He said the NCC would sanction any operator going contrary to the
stipulation of the SIM Card Registration Code, sections 19 to 21, with
an errant operator paying N200,000 for each flaw.
—PUNCH
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