NCC declares 13 telecoms operators inactive

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The operators became inactive, following the total loss of their customers to other operators that are currently pulling weight in the industry. They had since gone into extinction and could no longer offer competitive services to their customers, who decided to port to other network operators.

Porting was however not linked to the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) scheme that was introduced in April last year, as the 13 operators had long shown signs of distress in their operations. MNP allows subscribers the opportunity to port their numbers from one network to another, in search of better service quality.

NCC decided to declare the operators inactive to enable it study and circulate the accurate figures of telecoms operations in the country.

Inactive operators

The list of inactive operators, which was posted on NCC's website, include one national carrier, one GSM operator, five Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) operators and six Fixed/Fixed Wireless operators. The operators include NITEL, MTel, Starcomms, Reliance Telecoms (Zoom Mobile), Intercellular, MTS First Communications, WiTel, O' Net (Odua Telecoms), Rainbownet, Monarch Communications, Xs Broadband, Webcom, and Disc Communications.

All the operators were once vibrant, but became inactive due to their inability to cope with market competition.

Starcomms, for instance was at some point, the largest and most vibrant CDMA operator in the country, but suddenly went down the drain in a bid to expand and further grow the company. The once largest CDMA operator in the country, agreed to an outright sale of the company to Capcom, who promised to merge its operations with MultiLinks and MTS First Wireless, after buying the two CDMA operators.

The plan was to merge the three CDMA operators into a bigger and stronger operator that could compete with GSM operators, but along the line, the commercial agreement between Starcomms and Capcom, failed, which adversely affected the planned merger, thus leaving the three CDMA operators weaker, which eventually led their extinction in the telecoms space, a situation that made the NCC to declare them among the inactive networks.

According to the information on the NCC's website, active telecoms subscribers include MTN, Globacom, Airtel, Etisalat, Visafone, 21st Century and MultiLinks Telkom.