| Court upholds payment
of compensation to subscribers by GSM operators
By SOLA FANAWOPO
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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Photo:
Sun News Publishing
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Attempts by two GSM operators, MTN and Celtel to evade the
payment of compensation to subscribers over poor quality of
service, imposed on them by the Nigerian Communications Commission,
NCC, failed as a Federal High Court in Lagos, struck out the
case for lack of merit and insufficient grounds.
The two GSM operators had approached the court, requesting
an interlocutory injunction to restrain the commission from
implementing its earlier direction, upon which it recently
directed the two operators to pay N175 per subscriber for
the month ended January 2008, for not meeting key performance
indicators on quality of service as set by the regulator.
The court held that the Plaintiffs/Applicants had not shown
special circumstances to grant the relief being sought from
the court, and, therefore, dismissed the motion.
The NCC had on January 9, 2008, won the case earlier instituted
against it by the two operators who protested against the
notices on payment of compensation to subscribers issued to
them on 19th and 20th September, 2007. Following the ruling
of the court in favour of the NCC on the 9th of January 2008,
the commission on February 28, 2008, finally issued a direction
to both operators to pay compensation of N175.00 per subscriber
for the month ended January 31, 2008.
The commission said the two operators failed to meet the requirement
to achieve Traffic Channel Congestion, TCH, below 10% levels
for the month of January 2008, in line with the Key Performance
Indicators published by it, and issued to the operators late
last year.
It further directed the operators to pay all its active subscribers
for the effective month by way of airtime credit and that
no time limitation shall be placed by the operator on the
utilization of the airtime credit. All the active subscribers
are to be credited between March 1, 2008 and April 15, 2008.
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