The Director, Public Affairs, NCC, Mr. Tony Ojobo, disclosed this in an exclusive interview with our correspondent in Abuja on Thursday.
Some subscribers had reportedly been frustrated by the network operators in their bids to change their service providers through the window of Mobile Number Portability as provided by the NCC.
Ojobo said the commission had started investigating the allegations and warned that any operator found culpable would be sanctioned in accordance with the regulation guiding the MNP in the country.
He said, “It is wrong for any operator to even call subscriber to persuade him/her to stay on the network once the subscriber has indicated an interest to port to another mobile network.
“So far, what operators have told us is that any difficulty in porting arose from technical challenges. However, if we find that any operator is deliberately frustrating a subscriber that wants to port, the operator will face stipulated sanctions.”
Ojobo said apart from the investigation being conducted by the regulatory agency in collaboration with the MNP Clearing House, the MNP implementation committee was also investigating allegations of sabotage of the process.
The membership of the implementation committee is drawn from all the mobile operators, industry associations, the regulatory agency and the clearing house.
Statistics released by the regulatory agency showed that Emerging Markets Telecommunication Services, otherwise known as Etisalat, had been the greatest beneficiary of the porting scheme.
According to Ojobo, Etisalat received 44 per cent of all the subscribers that ported in the month of May.
The proportion increased in the month of June as 50 per cent of subscribers that ported chose to pitch their tent with the mobile operator.
In May, Airtel received 29 per cent of the subscribers that ported. For the month of June, however, the percentage of subscribers porting to the network reduced to 12 per cent.
The proportion of subscribers porting to the Glo Mobile in May was 17 per cent. This increased to 29 per cent in the month of June.
In May, 10 per cent of subscribers that ported to other networks chose MTN Nigeria Communications Limited. This varied slightly in the month of June as the operator received a total of nine per cent of all porting subscribers.
Number portability is an application that enables subscribers to migrate from one service provider to another without losing their numbers. It was introduced in Nigeria in April as a means to keep operators on their toes in terms of rendering quality services.
Source: Punch
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