Telecoms firms may raise tariffs

GLOBAL System of Mobile (GSM) telephone users across the country may pay higher tariffs.

This is because the Association of licensed Telecommunication Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has threatened to introduce discriminatory tariffs based on tax regimes and operating environments in different states.

This threat is coming on the heels of the assertion that the Nigeria’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector is growing by 30 per cent, second only to China, according to Prof. Cleopas Angaye, Director General of National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA).

Also, the wife of Primate of All Nigeria Church, Anglican Communion, Mrs. Nkasiobi Okoh has called for the Federal Government’s intervention over the poor delivery of telecom services by mobile phone operators.

Chairman of the ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, said that subscribers in states that were hostile to service providers through tax administration would pay more for telecoms services.

“What we are going to do is to adjust the meter so that people making calls from such states pay more than what others are paying,” he said.

Adebayo, who spoke at the weekend in Ilorin, Kwara State, during a courtesy visit to the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) chapel, condemned the indiscriminate closure of telecom sites and said that operators had decided not to reopen any site closed down by state governments without a court order.

“We are not going to beg them, we are not going to negotiate with them if they decide to close down a site because the operators refuse to pay them,” he added.

Adebayo said there were laws guiding the telecommunications industry regarding the closure of sites.

According to him, before a site could be closed by government, there must be a court order to the effect and a notification to the subscribers that such a disruption of service would happen.

The ALTON boss called on the Federal Government to classify telecommunication facilities as national security infrastructure.

You can read more on this story at http://kaaf.com/2012/11/Telecoms-firms-may-raise-tariffs-214556

with thier poor network abi... make dem raise am nah!!!! smh