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The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says a meeting has been convened to resolve the N42bn Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) debt issue between the telecom operators and the banks in the country.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Prof. Umar Danbatta made this known at a World Press Conference in Commemoration of the 2021 World Consumer Rights Day (WCRD) held in Abuja.
The theme for World Consumer Rights Day for 2021 was: “Tackling Plastic Pollution”.
The telecom operators had announced that they will stop the use of USSD by banks and other financial institutions in the country. But the Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Prof Umar Garba Danbatta announced that the issue was being resolved as a meeting had been summoned to address all the gray areas with a view to settling the disputed debt.
The banks are the major beneficiaries of the (USSD) code. We were hoping that an agreement on the sharing formula was going to be in place after the service was introduced.
The telecom operators whose infrastructure is being used and the banks should have a kind of sharing formula: how much is to be given to telcos and how much is due to banks. “So far any agreement has not been in place. But our hope is that the issue will be resolved amicably today,” said Danbatta.
This conference he said was conceived to highlight NCC’s commitment to protecting the telecom consumers and to highlight the regulatory role of NCC with respect to protecting the Rights of the Telecom Consumers and to connect it with the global significance of today’s celebration.
‘Activities and actions slated for this commemoration are to raise awareness and engage state and non-state actors on the global plastic pollution crisis.’’ The Commission had declared 2017 as the Year of the Telecom Consumer, in recognition of the central place the consumer occupies in the telecom ecosystem and in the emergent digital economy. ‘‘
The declaration by the Commission and the focus by WCRD 2017 emphasised the need to build ‘a digital world consumers can trust. ‘‘The objective of the regulation is to manage E-Waste; promote reuse, recycling and other forms of recovery; improve the environmental management system of operators in the telecom industry; and reduce greenhouse emissions as well as enhance sustainable development efforts.’’
This is coming three years after the NCC drafted the Nigerian Communications Industry E-waste Regulations in 2018.
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