Despite NCC Threat, Telecom Consumers Rue Poor Service

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LAGOS – Poor telecommunications network quality in Nigeria has continued to pose a critical challenge for consum­ers, even as the telecom regulator escalates financial penalties and en­forcement orders against operators.

Despite warnings of stricter en­forcement measures from (NCC) to operators against poor network performance, subscribers have con­tinued to grapple with the service quality plight.

There has been renewed com­plaints by Nigerian internet users in the previous weeks, who repeat­edly lamented deteriorating condi­tions of services by Nigerian telcos, which supposedly affected business transactions and other activities.

In its bid to redress the industry chal­lenge, NCC shifted from verbal warnings to heavy structural penalties to compel operators to upgrade their services. ­

To back up its displeasure with action, NCC issued a strict directive in which tele­communications operators were forced to compensate over 75 million affected sub­scribers with automatic air­time credits.

The payouts were calcu­lated based on the average consumer spending in loca­tions that failed regulatory benchmarks.

However, despite the ef­forts being made by NCC, there seems not to be a major reprieve for subscribers who more or less have been left to their fate.

The NCC is actively mov­ing to slam telecom operators with a combined fine of N12.4 billion for repeated breaches of its quality-of-service (QoS) regulations.

Already, the Minister of Communications, Innova­tion and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, has issued a directive requiring the NCC to deploy a system for auto­matic, instant penalties on network operators whenever a failure occurs.

While consumers’ an­ger is directed primarily at prominent Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) like MTN and Airtel, the systemic failure stems from a mix of localised infrastructure bot­tlenecks and macroeconom­ic shocks.

Highlighting the impor­tance of steady and reliabil­ity of telecom services, NCC had said telecommunications services have become essen­tial to daily life, business, ed­ucation, and access to critical services, stressing that con­sumers deserve reliable and high-quality service delivery.

According to NCC, im­proving ‘quality of service’ has remained a key regulato­ry priority over the last two years. The regulator said it has intensified monitoring of Mobile Network Opera­tors (MNOs), Internet Ser­vice Providers, and Tower Companies, while strength­ening oversight and collab­oration with public insti­tutions to tackle structural challenges affecting service delivery.

It revealed that in 2025 alone, MNOs invested more than N2.13 trillion in infra­structure and network up­grades, while tower compa­nies committed an additional N373.8 billion to support sec­tor-wide improvements.

Joint research conducted by the NCC and the broad­band intelligence firm Ookla revealed that coun­try-wide coverage is gener­ally sufficient, but localised network capacity is severely constrained. High-density urban centers in Lagos and Abuja are suffering from extreme congestion during peak hours, which slashes daytime speeds to less than half of nighttime speeds.

As one of the factors re­sponsible for the poor service, major infrastructure provid­ers, such as IHS Nigeria, have suffered severe disruptions in diesel fuel distribution. Also, strikes and logistics interference by independent supplier associations have re­peatedly shut off the power to critical base stations, result­ing in immediate localised blackouts for multiple major carriers simultaneously.

It is common knowledge in the telecoms industry that telecom towers are frequent­ly the targets of organised theft, cable cuts, and general vandalism. To combat this, the presidency designated telecommunications infra­structure as Critical Nation­al Information Infrastructure (CNII) to provide enhanced security backing.