After the 90-day window open to telecommunications subscribers, who succeed in porting their phone numbers to their network of choice, telecoms operators will be free to woo back their migrated subscribers.
This, it was learnt, would further deepen competition among telecoms operators.
A top source at the Nigerian Communications Commission told our correspondent in confidence that such “act of wooing” must not fall within the 90-day period within which the subscriber was expected to remain on the network he had succeeded in porting to.
The Special Assistant to the Executive Vice-Chairman, , on Technical Matters, Mr. Edoyemi Ogoh, confirmed to our correspondent that it was wrong for any operator to send text messages or call any subscriber within 90 days after the subscriber left its network.
According to him, such actions are punishable, as the NCC will sanction errant operators.
After over three months into the implementation of the Mobile Number Portability scheme, telecommunications subscribers in the country are already calling for perfection of the porting process, following rising cases of anomalies.
Our correspondent gathered that some subscribers that ported to their networks of choice still received calls and text messages from their former networks.
There are also cases of subscribers not getting alerts (in form of text messages) from third parties like banks, insurance companies, stock broking firms, pension firms, among others, on their new platforms. These are alerts they, hitherto, were getting before porting.
A subscriber told our correspondent that seven weeks after he ported to his choice network, he had had cases of calls from the customer centre of his former network seeking to get updates on his experience on the supposed ‘dropped’ network.
The National President, National Association of Telecoms Subscribers, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, who spoke to our correspondent on the development, said though there had been cases of seamless and successful porting, there could be cases of porting anomalies.
Ogunbanjo, who confirmed to our correspondent that a case of messages coming from a ‘dropped’ network had been reported to the association, said more evidences were being awaited. This, he explained, would provide a stronger platform for an official complaint by NATCOMS.
“We at NATCOMS advocate for a total and complete porting process, and nothing more. Operators, should, therefore, avoid any form of mischief,” he said.
Speaking to our correspondent on the telephone on the development, the Chief Operating Officer, Interconnect Clearing House Limited (the firm that oversees the entire porting process), Mr. Uche Onwudiwe, said it was against the rules if a network continued to reach a subscriber after the subscriber had ported from it.
He urged affected subscribers to report such anomalies to the Nigerian Communications Commission, and possibly, their new operator.
Onwudiwe said issues bordering around text messages (a part of data) were yet to be perfected. According to him, there is still a configuration issue, which the NCC and operators are currently working on to ensure that text messages are automatically routed to recipients.
He, however, advised subscribers to report text message anomalies linked to the MNP scheme to their banks and their choice operators, so that some good measures could be taken to address the situations as quick as possible.
He said, “If a network is calling someone after they had moved, it is against the rules, and should be reported.”
On the disruption of initial third party arrangements with banks and others for text messages receipt, he said, “There is a configuration issue. There is a functionality the NCC is working on with operators to see how messages can be automatically routed.
There had been strong indications that the conditions governing the MNP may be reviewed following some sort of indifference by some telecommunications subscribers in the country towards its adoption.
A stakeholders’ meeting was being planned to get fresh contributions from the regulator (NCC), telecoms operators, the Interconnect Clearinghouse Nigeria, the judiciary, subscribers associations, among others, on the way forward.
This move is expected to address major concerns like the continuous crave of subscribers to buy new SIM cards instead of porting to a choice network when the need arises; and the rise in use of dual and multiple-SIM phones by subscribers, which is a major set-back for the MNP scheme, among other concerns.
Some other issues that had been brought to the fore are: the 90-day stay duration on a particular network before any other migration (after an initial port); the 48-hour processing period to port; poor awareness, especially in the hinterlands; the need for physical presence before a successful porting can be achieved; among others.
However, telecoms companies under the aegis of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria and the Nigerian Communications Commission have disagreed over the resolution of the NCC to sanction errant operators under the Mobile Number Portability scheme.
ATCON, through its President, Mr. Lanre Ajayi, had said imposing sanctions on operators would only take away from them the money that could have been invested in building and expanding networks. He argued that such sanctions might worsen quality of service in the country, as funds that could have been ploughed back into operators’ network would be paid to the regulator as fines.