The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has shared telecom markets regulatory experience with the Congo-Brazzaville Telecommunications Regulations Authority (CTRA).
The Congolese delegation was at the NCC headquarters on a benchmarking tour because of the faith in the operational excellence and regulatory efficiency that have become the marks of Africa’s foremost regulator.
The visit was essentially to understudy NCC’s policies, practices and programmes that have made it a model telecommunications regulatory authority on the continent and beyond, a statement by the commission’s spokesperson Dr. Ikechukwu Adinde on Thursday.
The Congolese team led by CTRA’s Network Director, Benjamin Mouandza, spent three days at the NCC Head Office in Abuja, where it was exposed to key result-oriented regulatory activities, frameworks, programmes and policies of NCC, with the objective to explore how such operational frameworks could be adapted by the African nation noted for its huge rainforest reserves.
In the letter written to the Executive Vice Chairman (EVC) of NCC, Prof. Umar Danbatta, the Congloese regulator had indicated interest to gain more insights into three areas of NCC’s regulatory activities, namely, management of issues associated with Quality of Service (QoS), SIM Boxing and Call Masking, as well as telecom equipment type-approval process.
In response to the request, Danbatta had graciously accepted to host the team and further directed relevant departments of NCC, including Special Duties (SD); Technical Standards and Network Integrity (TSNI); and the Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement (CME) directorates to interact with the team to provide necessary information sharing that may be useful to the Congolese counterpart.
Addressing the CTRA team, the NCC’s Director, TSNI, Bako Wakil, spoke extensively on the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) institued by NCC on QoS and how these KPIs are measured and monitored by the Commission toward ensuring improved service delivery to the Nigeria’s ever-growing telecoms consumers. He said this also helped to improve Quality of Experience (QoE) of the consumers.
The “NCC is serious about type-approval process like other processes, because non-type approved devices and equipment which are also not manufactured to international standards and specifications have negative implications for quality of service delivery on the networks,” he said.
In a related presentation to the visiting team on SIM boxing fraud and efforts being taken by the NCC to combat the menace, NCC’s Director, CME, Ephraim Nwokonneya, spoke on the problems created by fraudulent practice of SIM Boxing, including threat to national security, loss of revenue to service providers and the government.
Commenting on the benefits of the visit, CTRA’s Mouandza, said the choice made by the Congolese regulator to visit NCC on a benchmarking tour has been worthwhile.
“We have come to understand how the regulator in Nigeria has been handling some salient regulatory issues and matters in the country as it relates to telecoms. In the course of this visit, I can say that our objective has been achieved. The experience has been very rich, we have learnt many things. We thank the EVC and his team for accepting to host us. We are more positioned now to replicate some of the things we have learnt in our telecoms market back home,” he said.