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|  By Sunday Dare  |

LET me welcome you all to the NCC 2017 Year of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer, an initiative of the NCC to focus on the needs and satisfaction of the Nigerian telecom consumers. This initiative is derivative of the 8-Point Agenda of the present NCC Management leveraging on the two key components of Improving Quality of Service (QoS) and Informing and Empowering Consumers.

NCC acknowledges your presence here today and notes it as signifying your support for this initiative by the Commission to protect, inform and educate the Nigerian telecom consumer.  Therefore, I must quickly extend to you our invitation to partner with NCC and join us on this one year journey. A journey during which NCC will strive to ensure customer satisfaction attains a level never witnessed before. Our goal is to make the consumer experience of the average Nigerian better.

Others partners on this important journey include the Network operators otherwise called MNOs – the big four and the other players like Smile, Spectranet and NTel as well as key stakeholders such as Infrastructure companies (INFRACOS), ALTON, ATCON, State governments, MDAS, Security agencies and other stakeholders.

The consumer is one of the key stakeholders in the stakeholder ladder of the NCC. With a base of over 154 million subscribers, the Nigerian consumers dominate the African telecommunications landscape. They provide the revenue that Telcos need to keep going.  Yet, they do not get the best satisfaction when it comes to services. That experience is about to change with the efforts and plans that the NCC 2017 Year of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer will roll out. NCC will not only answer the why of consumer problems but also provide the solutions, working with network operators, MNOs.

Many would want to ask why the NCC 2017 Year of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer? A loaded question no doubt. I will attempt to provide a quick answer using the 5 Ws and H that guided me through my career as a media and communications professional. They are the WHY, WHEN, WHERE, WHAT, and WHO.

Why? The consumer is important as the oxygen that keeps Telcos alive. The consumer is a major stakeholder whose satisfaction matters. The satisfaction of the consumer will help the Telcos increase their revenue base. NCC as a regulator is mandated to protect, inform and educate consumers.

When? The campaign runs in year 2017 and beyond. Every time we seek to engage and explore ways to make customer experience better is the when of this campaign.

Where? In the Nigeria telecoms industry, both for the inbound and outbound call experience -it is all over the country, from Kano to Kotongora, from Ado-Ekiti to Ekpoma, from Ikeja to Lokoja, from Dutse to Jos, Birnin-Kebbi to Yenagoa, we want the consumer to experience good quality of service.

Who? The consumer – subscribers to voice and SMS services, subscribers to data service and subscriber to Value Added Services.

How? By providing unique and timely information to empower the consumer, by engaging stakeholders in a constructive way to ensure that they work with the NCC, by ensuring quality of service across board, by increasing the level of awareness and activation of the 2442 Do-Not-Disturb Service and by educating the consumer about the environmental and health impact of the telecoms infrastructure and type of phones approved for use.

The drivers of the NCC 2017 Year of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer are the 2442 Do-Not-Disturb Service, the 622 toll free complaints line, Quality of Service, QoS and Electromagnetic Field, EMF are the areas that the information provided in the course of the campaign would focus on.

We therefore invite you to listen to our PSAs and radio jingles; join us on our roadshows; grab and read our handbills and posters; spare 35 seconds to read that message we have on that roll-up banner; watch that TV program and listen to that radio conversation. That’s how to be part of this initiative.

Designed as a feedback process, a bottom up awareness campaign not the talk – down approach that is the expected norm. Its spread is across the country.

I am sure my Executive Vice Chairman, Professor UG. Danbatta will provide more details and justification for this initiative. He will make a more powerful pitch than I have tried to do today.

At this juncture, my job here is done. Mine is to welcome you to an exciting possibility of consumer satisfaction and better and consistent quality of service, to ask you to JOURNEY with NCC, to ADVOCATE with NCC, to PARTNER with NCC and to make customer experience and our telecom industry better.

Thank you and I welcome you to the NCC 2017 Year of the Nigerian Telecom Consumer.

• Being address of welcome by Sunday Dare, NCC’s executive commissioner (Stakeholder Management) at the Flag Off for 2017 Year of Nigerian Telecom Consumer at NCC Headquarters, Abuja, on Wednesday March 15, 2017.

—  Mar 27, 2017 @ 01:00 GMT

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