The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has taken action against telecommunications firms MTN and Globacom over the number of rejected mobile number port requests.

According to the NCC the two operators have breached the guidelines for the country's mobile number portability scheme and are required to pay fines totaling NGN34-million as contained in the regulator's 2015 Q4 Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Reports.

Globacom has to pay NGN22 million and MTN NGN12 million.

The regulator said it will closely monitor the mobile number portability process in Nigeria and will not hesitate to sanction operators that violate the process, including those that fail to complete the port request process within the allowed time.

It said: "A series of compliance checks were carried out regarding timer violations by donor operators with respect to validation and deactivation responses, which had timelines of two hours and one hour, respectively. There was a timer deactivation violation by MTN regarding a corporate port request of over 109 lines belonging to Nigerian Breweries Plc.

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

Globacom was also sanctioned for a timer validation violation regarding 11 individual port requests and one corporate request.

The operator is said to have breached the two hours allowable for validation of six port requests from the NPC as stated in the MNP Business Rules.

According to the NCC, Glo validated a port request over nine hours after the receipt from the MNP administrator.

"Glo breached the allowable one hour for the donor to deactivate the 147 ported out lines belonging to Reckitt Limited in violation of the provisions of the MNP business rules... All the timer violations were undergoing enforcement actions. The activities of the commission are consistent with Section 89 of the Nigerian Communications Act 2003," stated the regulator.