The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) said it has advised telecoms operators to stop the automatic renewal of services Nigerian telecoms consumers subscribed to on their network.
This the regulatory agency said is to forestall operators from arbitrarily charging telecoms subscribers.
The NCC Director in charge of Consumer Affairs Bureau, Alhaji Abdullahi Maikano made this known on Tuesday while fielding questions from journalists at NCC’s Special Media Interaction held at Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Ikeja Lagos.
The NCC Director ascribed the arbitrary charges of consumers account to automatic renewal of services and to some other factors.
“In our own investigation, what we discovered that is responsible for undue deductions from consumers account are mainly linked to the automatic renewal of data by consumers, the famous unsolicited text messages, and the imposition of subscription of some Value Added Services,” the Consumer Affairs Bureau Boss said.
The regulatory agency said it is aware of the challenges being faced by Nigerians in the telecoms sector, and warned that it will not hesitate to impose stiffer sanctions against erring operators.
The NCC Director Maikano, had in a town hall meeting in Oye, Ekiti state, said, “We have to protect consumers from market exploitation and empower them to make rational and informed decision when making their choices of services”.
“The actions we have taken are in two folds:
“We issued a directive to all the operators that no automatic renewal of data. If the data subscription expires, the consumer stays without data, until he/she subscribes it.
“In addition, the unsolicited text messages are sources of depletion of consumers account, and we have come up with Do Not Disturb (DND)” that consumers can activate to stop unsolicited text messages,” Director Maikano said.