By 
By MARTIN EKPEKE
With the increasingly dwindling quality of telecommunications network been experienced by Nigerians daily, it has been revealed that the number of minutes of telephone calls made by Nigerians annually dropped from 45 billion in 2008 to 41 billion minutes in 2009 due to dropped calls, congestion on networks and service outage.
The Managing Director of Backup Networks Limited, a quality of services measurement company, Mr. Monday Ogbe, revealed this during a training programme for journalists reporting Information and Communication Technology sector, organised by the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria and Information Technology Association of Nigeria which was sponsored by the Nigerian Communications Commission.
The persistent poor quality of service on telecoms networks has been attributed to poor network management system and improper management of telecom infrastructures, thereby having negative implications on businesses and individual needs.
Ogbe therefore called for a proactive network resource planning both from the subscriber and operator perspective, active and passive feedback from subscribers on network performance, proactive deployment of network maintenance team to troubled spots nationwide as well as effective regulatory policing with penalties on KPI defaults as solutions to the problem.
In the same vein, the President of Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Engr. Titi Omo-Ettu challenged the Nigeria telecom regulator to sanction operators that fail to comply with the Key Performance Indicators. “We have not been regulating well in the past, rather, we have been creating and building the industry and I think now is the time for the NCC to begin serious regulation, especially in the areas of quality of services,” he said.
