The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday justified its directive to big telcos to hike data tariff, saying it was in the interest of the survival of the industry.
Its Director of Spectrum Administration, Austine Nwaulune, who spoke on the sideline of this year’s Annual Consultative Forum on Engineering and Emerging Technologies organised by the NCC at Lagos Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Ikeja, said current economic situation realities in the country necessitated the decision.
He said: “These are for economic reasons. What you don’t want is to kill an industry. People are talking about erosion on Return of Investment; erosion of Average Revenue Per User (ARPU), what you don’t want is to put a car on the road and failed to make provision to replace it (should the need arise). “What that means is that if the car stops working, you stop being a car owner. But if you put a car on the road and you know that that car will have a problem and you begin to make move to prevent such, it means you will be a car owner for long. So what the regulator does in the car is to ensure the car doesn’t die either in cold or hot. So, as the regulator we work to ensure that we put measures that are good for the industry. So the whole process was to protect the industry from collapse.”
Meanwhile, to enhance the deployment of telecoms services across the country, the Commission is considering the adoption of Spectrum Trading as a means of enhancing optimum utilisation of spectrum.
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