Daily Independent (Lagos)
Emma Okonji
5 January 2009
For the first time since the commencement of GSM operations in 2001, subscribers are happy with the services of telecommunications operators at festive period.
Nigerians have been commending telecommunication operators for their seamless and uninterrupted services that made their yuletide season pleasant and joyous.
According to them, the 2007 Christmas and 2009 New Year celebrations were uninterrupted during the process of sending warm greetings and lovely wishes to their loved ones through text messages and voice calls.
Some of the subscribers, who spoke to Daily Independent said this year's celebration was fully supported by all networks, unlike previous years when they could not send text messages as a result of network congestions across networks.
"With my GSM phone, I was able to reach out to my friends in Kaduna, Kano, Abuja, Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Benin, Ibadan, without necessarily visiting them. I felt at home with all my friends outside Lagos, including my relations. I was able to send text messages to them at different times and received instant reply via text message and voice," said Adeniyi Martins, a Lagos based subscriber to Globacom and MTN.
Another subscriber to Zain, Okafor Vincent, thanked all network operators for performing beyond subscribers' expectations at Christmas.
He said people were able to recharge and make calls without experiencing network congestions and hanging of text messages as it was in previous years. He equally thanked the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecom industry regulator, for the prompt step taken in ensuring that operators were prepared ahead of time to accommodate volume of calls and text messages that were generated during the yuletide season.
NCC had in a letter, shortly before the celebrations commenced, warned telecom operating companies to optimise their networks so as to cope with the volume of traffic that would be generated during the yuletide season.
Executive Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive of NCC, Ernest Ndukwe, who gave the warning in Abuja, said during festive seasons when there are a lot of goodwill messages, there are usually challenges for networks not only in Nigeria but in other parts of the world to cope with the volume of traffic. He, however, stressed that the commission was not prepared to entertain the usual deluge of complaints concerning network congestion, as it expects operators to have anticipated the rise in traffic and do something about it.
Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecommunication Companies of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, who equally commended operators for doing subscribers proud at yuletide through the offering of uninterrupted telecom services, said there was an impressive telecom service delivery in 2008, despite its many challenges.
According to him, there were no records of drop calls, inability to recharge phones, poor voice clarity, undelivered text messages, among other complaints that used to be in the past years. Commenting on the general service offering, Adebayo said there was no collapsed telecom companies, adding that operators came out with value added services that supported businesses of various kinds and tariff dropped as more value added services were introduced in 2008.
Meanwhile, MTN Nigeria has assured its customers of its unwavering commitment to provide excellent telecommunications services during the Christmas and New Year despite the expected seasonal surge in demand.
MTN Corporate Services Executive, Wale Goodluck, who gave the assurance said: "MTN made suitable preparations, especially in the area of additional capacity on the network to address the surge in demand that was expected at Christmas and New Year celebrations," adding that "this pattern of usage and the attendant impact on the network is a normal trend faced by operators all over the world during festive seasons."
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