The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has issued fines, totaling NGN 120,4 million (approximately US$604 000), to four major telecommunications networks yesterday over failure by the operators to deactivate all pre-registered lines, including those with incomplete registration details.

The regulator said its monitoring team had discovered that several pre-registered and defective SIMs are still active.

In correspondence to MTN, the NCC claimed its team had been able to call 402 lines on the network that were supposed to be deactivated.

According to communication from the NCC, MTN must pay a total sum of NGN 102.2 million - about 84.8% of the total fine announced. Globacom will have to fork out NGN 7.4 million, Etisalat was asked to pay NGN7 million and Airtel was fined NGN3.8 million.

The fines are expected to be paid on or before September 9 failing which a daily fine of NGN 100,000 would be imposed.

In separate communication, the commission said it will issue an additional NGN21.8 million fine to MTN following its discovery of 109 active additional pre-registered SIM cards on the network.

Subscribers complain

A cross section of telecoms subscribers whose lines were deactivated by the various networks said they were dissatisfied with the commission and the operators over their enforced actions.

When ITWeb Africa visited offices of the various telecoms companies in the southwest region of the country, large numbers of subscribers were seen in queues waiting to register their lines.

At the Iwo Road Ibadan office of MTN, the operator set up a makeshift waiting room for the hundreds of subscribers that besieged the office – which, according to workers, usually handles an average of ten customers at a time.

But with more customers visiting this and several other MTN offices in the city and across the nation, subscribers are complaining about the long hours they have to spend before they are finally attended to.

"The shortest period you can spend here before getting attended to is a minimum of three hours because you to wait and wait until it gets to your turn. And when it's finally your turn, it will be as if you are doing the whole process again - even though they only told us that just wanted some omitted details," said Sayo Adegbite, an MTN subscriber.

Telecommunications officials are re-documenting information and the process has subscribers concerned.

"I hope this is the last time they will be asking us to come and do this process because it is not an easy thing for me to abandon my work and stay in Airtel office to register. Time is money and millions of billable hours will be in this process because of the inability of the NCC and telecoms companies to get it right once. Who's to blame for the pre-registered lines? It's the commission and operators who couldn't prevent it in the first place," said Femi Gabriel, an accountant and Airtel subscriber.