Nigeria: The Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) will this year spend a sum of N2.2 billion on the monitoring of the quality of services rendered by telecommunication operators in the country.
NCC Chief Executive Officer Mr. Eugene Juwa, today disclosed this while defending before the Senate Committee on Communication, the commission's budget estimate of N48.8 billion for the 2012 fiscal year.
He noted that the commission could not sanction the operators last December owing to lack of an enabling regulation.
"The regulation we are using to sanction them was just gazette only towards the end of February. If you sanction the service providers, they would take you to court and the action will become null and void. So, we are on a very solid ground to sanction them now, and we are now waiting for them to pay us. They have written to us asking for a meeting, but the sanction still stays", he said.
A breakdown of the commission's budget shows capital and special projects of N17.9billion as well as other internal expenditures of N13.9 billion.
The commission is also to spend N7.1 billion on its emergency communication centres, and another N4.3million on its school support scheme; while it is targeting N6.5 billion revenue from spectrum fees and other charges.
The Senate committee, which earlier wondered why it took the NCC so long to fine the service providers, urged it (NCC) to recover the N1.17billion fine slashed on them (operators).
The chairman of the committee, Senator Gilbert Nnaji (PDP, Enugu East), said, "In spite of the various issues going on in our nation's telecommunication sector, the issue of worsening quality of services has become so endemic that one begins to have the impression that both the regulator and the operators have lost control"
"However, the sorry state of the prevailing telecoms quality of service leaves no one in doubt that the investment on telecom infrastructure such as the State Accelerated Broadband Initiative and the Wire Nigeria Project seem not to be yielding desired results," he added.
