The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has threatened to impose serous sanctions on one of Nigeria’s telecommunications operators in the country, MTN, if it does not stop implementing its new tariff plan tagged MTN TruTalkplus.
The telecoms industry regulator, which gave the warning in a statement released over the weekend, said it did not grant approval for the promo, which is already running, even as it barred MTN from further advertisement of such service in the print and electronic media or on its websites.
NCC, in a letter dated May 19, 2015 with ref No NCC/MTN/18/15 and signed by the Head, Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement, Mr. Efosa Idehen and Head, Legal and Regulatory Services, Mrs. Yetunde Akinloye, claimed that records of the Commission showed that the operator has no approval of the regulatory authority before embarking on the new promotional tariff plan.
Its Compliance Unit revealed that the new tariff with daily access fee of N5, allows subscribers to call all networks at 11k/sec and N20k/sec to UK, USA, India, Canada and China.
The regulatory commission’s checks revealed that MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd has already configured this tariff plan on their network and has therefore implemented same without the appropriate regulatory approval. It said the action contravenes section 108 (1) of the Nigeria Communications Act 2003.
“Consequent upon the above, the Commission thereby directs MTN Nigeria Communications Ltd to immediately discontinue this Tariff Plan and all associated advertisements regarding same or otherwise face regulatory sanctions accordingly,” it said.
The NCC had given this order in fulfillment of its mandate under section 89 of NCC Act 2003 having carried out a compliance check on the recently introduced MTN Nigeria Limited TruTalkplus Tariff Plan.
The statement noted that NCC’s investigations showed that MTN Nigeria has already configured this tariff plan on its network and has therefore implemented same.
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