NCC Empowers Telcos to Deactivate Inactive Subscribers

*Can recover lines if dormancy persists for another 6 months

Emma Okonji

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has empowered telecommunications companies (Telcos) to deactivate inactive subscribers on their networks after six months of inactivity.

This is one of the high points of the new guidelines approved for Telcos by the NCC that would take effect any moment from now.

According to the new guidelines seen by THISDAY, if the inactivity of a subscriber persists for another six months, the subscriber may lose the number, except for a network-related fault inhibiting an RGE.

“A subscriber’s line may be deactivated if it has not been used, within six months, for a Revenue Generating Event (RGE), and if the situation persists for another six months, the subscriber may lose their number, except for a network-related fault inhibiting an RGE,” the guidelines stipulated.

To recover their lines, the commission said subscribers must provide “proof of good reason for absence and are at liberty to request for line parking.”
The commission however said on credit alert while on call, telcos would be expected to send “a single short-beep to the call initiator, two minutes, and at 30 seconds to termination of the ongoing call.”

NCC added that low credit announcement to be played while the call is being originated in a situation where the call cannot last up to 30 seconds.

The commission said the new guidelines were in accordance with section 57 of the NCC Act to allow stakeholders to make contributions to the policy.

The new NCC guidelines, titled, ‘Draft Quality of Service Business Rules’, stipulate the minimum quality and standards of service, associated measurements, and key performance indicators for measuring the quality of service.

In the document, NCC directed telcos to attend to customers within 30 minutes upon arrival at any of their service centres across the country.

“For customer care centres, waiting time to be physically attended to by relevant staff at customer care centres is 30 minutes. The licensee shall provide means of measuring the waiting time, starting from the time of arrival at the premises,” according to the document.

The commission also said telcos must ensure that customers could speak to a customer care representative within five minutes when they call a telco’s helpline.
“Lines should not be more than three times; maximum number of rings before a call is answered by either an IVR machine or a live agent should not be more than five; and where a customer decides to speak to a live agent, the maximum duration allowable on the queue/IVR should be five minutes before answer,” NCC said.

“In exceptional cases where a live agent may be unavailable within five minutes to answer the call, a customer should be given an option to hang up to be called back within a maximum time of 30 minutes. Customer care lines that can be accessible through 21 free access numbers and if one number, then it should accommodate multiple other network calls at the same time,” NCC further said.