Data roll-over begins on June 26 – NCC

…says N5m fi ne on each SIM card awaits defaulting operator

The implementation of data roll-over directive will start on the 26th of this month, the Nigerian Communications Commission [NCC] has said. Th is means the telecom operators must henceforth add a subscriber’s unused or unfinished data to his/ her new or next data subscription. Before this new directive from the NCC, subscribers’ unfinished or unused data subscription automatically becomes useless to him/her as soon as it hits the expiry date. But Thursday, the NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman Prof Garba Umar Danbatta said the telecom operators must begin the implementation of the data rollover directive from June 26, 2018. Prof Danbatta gave the marching order at the 95th Consumers Outreach Programme in Dutse, Jigawa state.

The NCC boss who was represented by the Head of Information and Reference Unit at the commission Alhaji Ismail Adedigba said failure by the operators to start implementing the directive would attract N5miilon fine on each subscriber which they fail to rollover.  ‘’Th e NCC has directed the telecom service providers in the country to begin the implementation of data roll-over on June 26th, 2018. They have been duly informed about this and they have also been given adequate time to prepare their networks for it. ‘’Failure to implement this will attract N5million fine on the first of failure on each SIM cards and   N500,000 on each day that follows the fi rst default date.

All these are to ensure that the consumers’ rights, privileges and interests are adequately protected ‘’, he said. Prof Danbatta said the NCC had been inundated with various complaints and the commission had been tackling them successfully. In her remarks, the NCC’s Director of Consumers Affairs Bureau, Mrs Felicia Onwuegbuchulam said the Consumer Outreach Programme was one of the NCC’s initiatives to bring together telecom consumers in the urban areas with network operators and regulator to discuss and proffer solutions to consumer related issues and ensure that consumers have value for money through effective service delivery.

The forum seeks to educate telecom consumers and other stakeholders on contemporary issues generating interest in the industry and also serves as a feedback mechanism for the commission in making regulatory interventions for the benefit of the consumers and service providers as well as the industry as a whole’’, she said. She said the consumers are the target beneficiaries of all NCC’s activities which make them enjoy primary focus in terms of ensuring they get good quality of service. Governor Abubakar Badaru said the NCC should work on closing the access gaps in the state. Represented at the occasion by his deputy, Barrister Ibrahim Hassan Hadeija also said the NCC and the operators should do more to make e-learning popular among students by crashing the prices of data subscription.