MTN may attract further sanctions in Nigeria for allegedly violating Mobile Number Portability (MNP) process time obligations as stipulated by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in the third quarter of 2015. Other networks, including Globacom and Etisalat, may also be sanctioned.

Iin its 2015 Q3 Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Report the NCC said it is planning to take "appropriate actions" and will be monitoring the operators closely in order to properly deal with increasing cases of port request rejections.

The NCC said, "Consequent upon the above, series of compliance checks were carried out regarding timer violations by donor operators with respect to 'validation and deactivation responses', which have timelines of two hours and an hour respectively."

The regulatory body stated that it had carried out compliance checks in the third quarter and it observed that there was a timer deactivation violation by Etisalat, regarding a corporate port request of over 63 lines belonging to Neoconde Energy Limited.

"The company had initiated a corporate port out request from Etisalat to Airtel on Aug. 7, 2015 at 9.13a.m., but was partially completed as at 1.52p.m. on the same day. As a result, these 63 subscribers were unable to receive calls from Etisalat's network,'' NCC said.

It also noted there was a timer deactivation violation by MTN regarding a corporate port request of over 109 lines belonging to Nigerian Breweries Plc. Nigerian Breweries Plc reportedly initiated a corporate port out request from MTN to Glo via lead MSISDN: 07036735494 on Aug. 11, 2015 at 1.20p.m., but was partially completed as at 11.22a.m. on Aug. 14, 2015.

NCC added, "As a result, these subscribers were not able to receive calls from MTN subscribers. In the same vein, a timer validation violation by MTN regarding four individual Port requests from MSISDNs: 08139382308, 08143810152, 08135485305 and 08162108093.

"MTN breached the timer of two hours for validation of four port requests from the NPC as stated in the MNP Business Rules."

NCC added that Globacom violated timer validation with 11 individual requests and one corporate port request.

"Glo also breached the one allowable hour for the Donor to deactivate 147 Ported out lines belonging to Reckitt Ltd consistent with provisions of the MNP Business Rules. All the above timer violations are currently undergoing enforcement actions,'' the commission said.

The commission is yet to announce sanctions or other measures it would take.