The Nigerian Communications
Commission on Monday said it would
sanction MTN, Airtel and Globacom for
defying its directive on automatic
migration to Pay-As-You-Go data bundle.
The commission made this known in its
‘2015 3Q Compliance Monitoring and
Enforcement Report’, obtained by the
News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos.
The NCC said it had continued to receive
complaints from subscribers on automatic
migration of data bundle package to Pay-
As-You-Go billing upon the depletion of
their data bundle.
It stated, “Consequently and pursuant to
section 53(1) of the NCA 2003, the
commission on the 3rd of August, 2015
directed all mobile service operators to
comply with the data bundle directives.
That where a subscriber’s data bundle
account is fully depleted before the due
date, the service providers should notify
the subscriber via SMS, giving information
regarding the tariff/billing rate for
automatic migration.
“That all service providers should
henceforth stop auto-migration of
subscriber’s data service to the Pay-As-
You-Go account upon the depletion of the
data bundle account, except with the
express consent and authorisation of the
subscriber via SMS.”
The regulatory agency said that a follow-
up compliance check was carried out,
which revealed that Etisalat was the only
operator to be in compliance with the
directive.
It said that Etisalat notified its subscribers
through SMS of the depletion of their
data bundle accounts before the due
dates.
The telecoms regulator also said that
Etisalat sought the consent of the
subscribers before automatically migrating
them to the PAYG data service.
The NCC added, “Globacom is in
compliance with Direction No. 1 as
subscribers receive SMS detailing the
tariff rates for auto-migration on
depletion of their data bundles. However,
Globacom failed to obtain express
consent from the subscribers before
migration to PAYG and, therefore, (was)
in violation of Direction No. 2.
“MTN is in compliance with Direction
No.1, but failed to highlight the tariff rate
for PAYG billing. In addition, data service
is not suspended upon the depletion of
the data bundle account even without an
authorisation via an SMS from the
subscriber.
“Airtel is not in compliance with the
above directions. Consequent upon the
above, the commission has issued a
notice of intention to sanction the
concerned service providers.”
