Nigeria's telecommunications authority has threatened to impose sanctions on a subsidiary of MTN Nigeria, following what it alleges amounts to poor customer service.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday issued a statement warning MTN Nigeria Communication that it would impose sanctions on the subsidiary if it did not provide a report on recent problems experienced by subscribers in the country's principal local government area of Lagos.
MTN Nigeria says, due to technical difficulties on one of its servers, caused by a power outage, service to Lagos and surrounds was affected on Tuesday. The operator subsequently communicated with subscribers via Twitter and Facebook, saying it was aware of the problem and that “engineers are working hard to resolve [the issue]”.
The NCC told local media yesterday that MTN Nigeria, which it alleged failed to keep subscribers informed, had 24 hours to provide the body with a report on the network situation, including details of what was being done to “urgently address the problem”. Failing that, said the authority, sanctions could be imposed on the operator, which has the largest subscriber base in Nigeria.
An MTN Nigeria spokesperson says the NCC's statement to the press yesterday came as a surprise to the company.
“The incident under reference is a service disruption that some of our customers experienced on 1 May. There was a power-related incident at our Ikoyi switch late on [Tuesday]. It was quickly rectified, but we realised that all the affected customers would not feel the full impact of the restoration for a few hours.”
MTN Nigeria says it promptly took extensive steps to inform both the NCC and its customers of the problem. “A letter was dispatched to the NCC [the next day], informing the NCC and explaining what we had done to normalise. Affected customers were also informed by SMS, Twitter, Facebook and radio announcements. We offered our apologies.”
By Wednesday afternoon, says the spokesperson, service had been fully restored. “Indeed, we sent additional SMSes to our customers confirming this.”
The operator says no network in Nigeria has invested more in infrastructure than MTN, which this year spent $1.3 billion on the network.
MTN, Africa's largest cellphone operator, saw its greatest growth over the year ended 31 December 2011 in Nigeria, with a 20.1% leap in subscriber numbers. With over 35 million subscribers, MTN Nigeria Communications is the largest subsidiary in the MTN Group Nigeria.
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