Telecoms: Providing adequate protection for the consumer

Communication is a cultural necessity in the Nigerian society. Every ethnic group thrives on verbal interaction which has enriched our indigenous vocabulary so much that we have evolved our own version of pidgin English, parading a rich blend of our over 250 languages, which is fast becoming the unofficial lingua franca. Developing contemporary infrastructure to enhance communication therefore is an undisputed priority for our developing economy and the socio-cultural components of our society.

It is thus utterly frustrating for the average Nigerian that simple communication is still such an elusive concept, more than a decade since mobile communication was launched with such promise and expectations. While I concede that there may be legitimate arguments why our voice and data communication is practically comatose, the exploitation of the telecoms consumer, in the midst of such poor service delivery, is absolutely unacceptable.

Many consumers send me complaints of various ways in which they are daily short changed, cheated or exploited as subscribers to one network or the other without a single exception. Complaints range from drop calls, network failure, illegal deductions from credit balance, charges for uncompleted calls; the list could go on. As a consumer of telecoms services myself, numerous experiences of poor service delivery validates all the complaints. Unfortunately, as it is with other sectors of the economy, structures for redress are at best weak or at worst, non-existent.

I often wonder if there are stipulated standards for service delivery in this society and if they do exist, who does the monitoring to ensure compliance.  We tend to assume that standards will set itself or evolve out of the goodness of stakeholders in a sector, when setting and enforcing standards should be government's role in towards a conducive trade environment.

In my opinion, errors in government policies often contribute to the weak service delivery standards we find in our economy. One of such is the common practice of combining the regulation of a sector with the protection of consumers within that sector (another undesirable legacy of the military era, I guess).  For instance, NCC regulates the telecoms sector by setting supply guidelines for the operators. The same NCC is also empowered to protect consumer rights within the sector. This is an apparent conflict of interest especially when NCC generates income from the activities of telecoms providers. How do you protect consumers from exploitation when you are an indirect beneficiary of the proceeds of the same exploitation?

This singular error permeates practically every sector and could be adduced as a major reason why consumer protection structures are weak in Nigeria. A sector regulator primarily focuses on regulating the supply side of the economy. Thus while it is empowered to protect consumers, most regulating agencies are not focused on the management of the demand side of transactions. In the cases of NCC, CBN and many more, which makes an income from stakeholders in their various sectors, one cannot expect them to prioritise the consumer over the supplier, thus consumer protection has become mere tokenism and media activity.

There is something blatantly dishonest when a service provider persists in charging for services that he did not provide. Since its debut, consumers have endured the pain of per minute billing, high tariffs, lack of accountability, poor customer care structures, and so on from telecoms service providers with little or no succour. Recently, NCC announced a penalty to be paid by all providers for their legendary poor services which in itself seemed like a good move to check them but it fell flat for me when I realised that the fine would not be returned to the consumers who paid for services that were never provided. This means NCC is an indirect beneficiary of the consumer's loss. How then can we trust NCC to ensure that we only pay for what we use? Herein is the dilemma.

In spite of the low service delivery recorded in the telecoms sector, service providers are daily edging the consumer on to throw more money down the drain via promotions, lotteries, purported "free" airtime, cash gifts in millions, cars and recently, an airplane gift! This sales promotion strategy can be seen as an effort to distract the consumer from the reality of the providers' poor service delivery. When a brand (in this instance, a generic one) has to rely on sales gimmicks to meet target, there is a disconnect between the brand and its consumers, which is true in this instance.

Imagine if, in a heroic effort, to restore balance to the telecoms environment service providers are directed to cease promotions until they can achieve 75 per cent accuracy in service delivery on voice and data! Who will be the double winner? The consumer!  In the highly unlikely event that will happen, consumers will no longer have to pay for drop calls nor chase a mirage by daily contributing to the pool under the guise of a promotion.

If anyone asked me, Consumer Protection Council (CPC) is best suited to protect the consumer's rights and privileges especially in the telecoms sector. However, as long as every new regulatory agency that is set up is given the same mandate as CPC, consumers might need to continue to take steps to protect themselves from exploitation.

IMOH, Patrick E.
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