Interesting...I expect their SA HQ to "hammer" the country's management.

Emma Okonji writes that the recent N1.04trn fine imposed on MTN by the Nigerian Communications Commission is a clear demonstration of the regulator's intent to bring to an end MTN's reign of impunity despite the pain and shock the fine may have brought


The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms industry regulator, on Monday this week, shocked MTN and the entire telecoms industry, when it slammed a whopping N1.04 trillion ($5.2 billion) on MTN for non-compliance with its directive to deactivate unregistered and improperly registered SIM cards from its network.

Although the directive was given to all the four GSM operators in the country, NCC said its investigation showed that only MTN bluntly disobeyed the directive, because other operators - Globacom, Airtel, and Etisalat obeyed the regulator and deactivated all identified unregistered and improperly registered SIM cards in their networks, within the seven days widow given them by the telecoms regulator to comply with the directive.

NCC said it based its fine on the number of unregistered SIM cards it found on the MTN network, totaling 5.2 million. According to NCC, each defaulting SIM attracts N200,000, totaling N1.04 trillion fine.

The fine came at a time when MTN was still contemplating on whether to pay the N102.2 million fine that the NCC slammed on it in August this year, for contravening its directive on SIM card deactivation, which as of today, has attracted additional N5.3 million following the accumulation of the additional fine of N100,000 per day for 53 days. NCC had warned that the N102.2 million fine would attract additional fine of N100,000 per day, beginning from September 7, until the fine was paid. September 7 till date is 53 days, which eventually attracted additional N5.3 million and a total accumulation of N107.5 million that is still hanging on MTN, in addition to the fresh fine of N1.04 trillion.

NCC's position

NCC had frowned on MTN’s disobedience to Nigerian constitutions and laws guiding the telecoms industry, and warned that its disregard for compliance, despite several warnings since September last year, has to stop hence forth.

NCC said MTN failed to comply with the directive to deactivate improperly registered, and that it has informed the public during a press conference held on August 18, 2015, that, as at the expiration of the 7-day deactivation deadline ending on August 11, 2015, MTN had failed to fully deactivate any subscriber.

Following repeated warnings and compliance enforcement visits, MTN only made a partial attempt to bar unregistered subscribers in selected areas over a few days in September 2015. Other operators had fully complied and reconciled their deactivations with the invalid registrations shared by the NCC up to four weeks earlier, NCC said.

The consequence of MTNs refusal to comply with the directive is even more pronounced as half of all the invalid registrations shared by the NCC belonged to MTN. These SIM cards with invalid registrations pose a grave security risk to the country as their registration information cannot be used to successfully identify their owners in the event of a security breach. The recent kidnapping of the former Minister of Finance, Chief Olu Falae was a case in point. The kidnappers used MTN SIM cards and MTN was unable to provide any registration data for those SIMs.

NCC explained that MTN’s non-compliance with the deactivation directive was unfortunately not an isolated incident. It needs to be seen in the context of a general pattern of non-compliance, with regulatory directives that actually predates the current SIM registration infractions.

MTN’s many sins

On November 8, 2012, NCC had directed operators to stop all promotions in an effort to address persistent quality of service issues within the industry. On April 2, 2013, the NCC lifted the ban on promotions for Etisalat, Airtel and Globacom based on appreciable improvements in their quality of service while the MTN’s ban remained in force owing to the lack of improvement in its quality of service.

MTN’s ban was subsequently lifted in June 2013. For the duration of the ban however, MTN failed to comply with the restriction on promotions and continued to offer promotions below the line while the ban was in force. In April 2013, the NCC published its Determination of Dominance 2013, wherein it declared MTN a dominant operator in the voice services and wholesale leased lines market and imposed an obligation to offer undifferentiated on-net and off-net tariffs on MTN among other restrictions. Enforcement of the obligation commenced in July 2013. MTN failed to comply with the obligation from July 2013 to October 2014, when the NCC eventually granted MTN a waiver to offer differentiated on-net and on-net tariffs despite its non-compliance with the on-net pricing restriction in the first instance. In July 2013, NCC directed MTN to withdraw the Virtual Top Up plus offer for being in violation of its pricing obligations under the 2013 Dominance Determination in May 2014, the NCC had issued a ‘Final Warning’ to MTN to comply with its pricing obligations under the 2013 Dominance Determination or face penalties.

In October 2014, NCC imposed sanctions on MTN for violating its pricing obligations under the 2013 Dominance Determination through its ipulse offer.

Also, in August 3, 2015, the NCC had directed that, from August 24, 2015, all operators should stop the automatic migration of data bundle subscribers to Pay As You Go (PAYG) browsing upon depletion of their data bundles. As at October 8, 2015, only Globacom and Etisalat had complied with the directive with MTN characteristically failing to comply. In the second quarter of 2015, in the NCC quarterly compliance enforcement report for Q2 2015, out of the six sanctions imposed on operators for various acts on non-compliance, MTN was involved and sanctioned for four separate infractions. As it stands today MTN’s persistent violations have forced the NCC to impose the unprecedented sanction of suspending all regulatory services to MTN following its accumulation of over 28 separate and proven infractions.

Fresh fine

The NCC, having reviewed the registration records of all the telecom operators and after taken into consideration their compliance records, the NCC imposed a fine on MTN alone for noncompliance on SIM registration. The fine of N1,040 billion was in line with Section 19 of the SIM Registration Regulations, which specified N200,000 fine per unregistered SIM. The penalty has been applied for the 5.2m MTN SIM card registration records found to be non-compliant by the NCC, the regulator said.

It added that “the unprecedented fine is indicative of the magnitude of the transgression and the seriousness with which the NCC and the authorities are approaching this issue.” It was also aimed at ensuring that the wilful non-compliance by MTN ceases.

MTN's Defense

However, MTN has condemned the huge sanction imposed on it, adding that as the 6th largest company in Nigeria, and the largest investor in Nigeria outside the oil sector and responsible for 60 per cent of national telecoms traffic, the sanction of such magnitude would stifle its telecoms business in Nigeria, where it had invested so much.

“MTN remains totally committed to the deepening of Nigeria's telecoms success story, having invested over $15 billion to build sub-Saharan Africa’s most extensive telecoms network in Nigeria and having paid over N1trillion in taxes/government charges since 2001, MTN”, the telecom operator said.

It added: "Our Information and Communications Technology (ICT) infrastructure supports various critical sectors of the economy such as banking, insurance, e-commerce, e-Government, Oil & Gas from an infrastructural and product perspective. The ICT industry with MTN as leader, is a critical enabler of socio-economic growth in Nigeria, but there are downside potentials, and we look forward to the continued support of government in matters like this."

According to MTN, "telecoms is fastest growing contributor to Nigeria's GDP, and contributes about 10 per cent average quarterly growth in 2014, and also contributed 8.2 per cent of Nigeria’s GDP in 2013. It said such sector that is contributing so much to the Nigerian economy, should not be allowed to be grounded by harsh policies."

MTN, which is considered to be a true Nigerian company by its operations and contribution to Nigeria's GDP, has over 500,000 Nigerians in its workforce as staff, which is about 99 per cent of its permanent workforce.
MTN further stated that the sanction would bring undue exposure to its network, which has over 60 million subscribers and the feasibility of manually inspecting each dataset to ensure conformance with NCC standards. It said the 7-day ultimatum would also lead to possible severe disruption to the social and economic lives of Nigerians. It suggested a review of the 48 hour window, during which registration activity must occur for a SIM to remain active four days after activation.


The genesis

Subscriber Identification Module or SIM card registration is a standard requirement that is increasingly prevalent the world over. Authorities and regulators mandate subscriber registration in order to control crime and offer security to mobile telephony customers and to the community at large. On May 1, 2010, telecommunications operators in Nigeria were mandated to start collecting biometric and non-biometric personal information for each new subscriber in an effort to improve information gathering towards enhancing national security. This was initiated by the Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA) in collaboration with other security agencies and the NCC.

On November 7, 2011, the SIM Registration Regulations came into force. Section 19 of the SIM Registration Regulations sets out a fine of N200, 000 for every SIM card, which is found to be fully active without proper registration details while Section 20 of the Regulations also stipulates a fine of N200, 000 for failure to deactivate any SIM Card without proper registration details.

Following the expiration of an initial grace period provided to existing subscribers to register their SIM cards, the NCC mandated all operators to deactivate all unregistered existing SIM cards on their networks by June 30, 2013, and in November 2013, Operators were directed to fully bar any newly registered SIM card, which fails to perform a voice or data communication within 48 hours after its registration. Directive to deactivate improperly registered SIM cards, commenced September 2014.

http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/ending-mtns-impunity/224034/ lalasticlala

Run them down..pls

This is the sweetest news i av ever heard

They deserve a separate billion dollar fine for all those _stupid text messages that they bombard their customers with!

Isiah 27? Get romantic crap? Get baby boo ringtone? Looking for cancer advice? Nonsense!

theives

sending annoying messages and still chargé on what u aren't using....i so hate dis netwrk....chargé them 1b dollars for dat isaiah63vs watever and another 1b dollars for MTN PLAY....nonsense

Etisalat will be the happiest. Saka will port back soon.

....The many sins of MTN. ...

They should impose a free service to all customer on them as a sanction.

to be sincere, MTN tried..

what i found annoying about them was their spam msgs and deduction of your credit when browsing, even when you have a valid subscribtion..

Abeg anything wey una wan do MTN, make una do...


But just remember say if them sell their assets waka, 500,000 to 1 Million Nigerians will be out of Jobs..





Is alright... #Continu.

MTN!

We have come of age..

Thanks for ripping us off..

We now have our senses...

Enough is enough..

Let us all begin to GLO with pride..

interesting

Ok nah!
I had since relegated my MTN sim to the background. ...only receives call from it
Etisalat or nothing...

That money is too much.....they want MTN to start sacking their workers abi.........NCC is just ranting.

They are craZy people. That bill given to them is small compared to the scam they have perpetrated on us.

If you know the illegal charging and SMS charges the get from us over the ears with no one questioning them? Am sure it's in the trillion of dollars.

Thank god someone has woken from slumber.

They can tell you to text thank god I woke up to 333 an it cost 40 naira monthly.

Run hem down. Let them go and collect such ridiculous amount from their country as leave us alone.

Dstv should watch out. There time is coming.

Please DSTV should be next . But that fine is way too much, these NCC guys dey vex gan !! Is it not Nigeria? If MTN should play their cards well, meet the right people, they will end up paying only a quarter of that money.

Good move in the right direction. How I wish they can also be fined based on their yeye unsolicited messages.

Na we go pay half.

ON GLO AND AIRTEL I STAND.


MTN ONLY FOR RECEIVING CALLS.... AND MY U-report updates....

ADENUGA should please exploit this opportunity!

Okay..

emptyHen. my phone can only use mtn sim

Good

holuwatobhy:
Na we go pay half.

How?
When they no tie us to the network?

Hmm! This is a really bad year for MTN.

It's a good news but I would have loved it more if they fine them until a way the masses will benefit from. Let them tell them to open there lines for free calls and browsing for the whole day. With that the masses will benefit a lot and not robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I'm sure a lot of people will agree to this

'Blood of zechariah'

Ok