Subscribers lament growing unsolicited messagesTHE Nigerian Communications Commission has been urged to urgently attach a deadline date to the on-going Subscribers Identification Module hamonisation exercise.The GSM firms including MTN Nigeria, Globacom, Airtel and Etisalat all stressed the importance and the necessity why government through the NCC must put a closing date to the SIM harmonisation period.Speaking in Lagos at the weekend at the NCC organised Telecoms Consumer Parliament in Sango, Ogun State, the telecommunications firm complained that there has been a greater fall in the number of subscribers who now comes out to register their SIMs, even with the various promos and incentives some operators have attached to the exercise.According to the Director, Customer Care, Globacom Nigeria, Maria Svensson, there has been a great lull in the SIM registration activities, which according to her was as a result of the fact that subscribers have relaxed and no longer come out unlike when the registration proper was on.Svensson said operators have noticed a sort of complacency in the activities, 'I will suggest that NCC put a date to the harmonization period because people shape up when they know that a time has been fixed for a particular thing.'The Globacom Customer Care Director, who hinted that the national operator have registered about 65 per cent of its subscribers advised that there was still need for more education and awareness on the exercise. She stressed that it was more difficult to register those in the rural areas because of the distance, education, poor state of infrastructure among others.According to her, there are some hinterlands that are yet to get any registration agents, which may affect the smoothness of the exercise.Joining her counterpart at Globacom, MTN Nigeria's Customer Consultant Sales Distribution Division in Ogun State, Mrs. Abiola Yusuf noted that the exercise, which has been very eventful, must be supported adequately so that the purpose can be realized in due course.Abiola said the harmonization period needs a fix deadline date to be more effective. 'What we have noticed is that people no longer respond unlike the pre-hamonisation period which had a fixed date and I must tell you operators are spending a lot in terms of incentives to woo their subscribers. I think a deadline date will be best for the hamonisation period, even if it is another six months.'According to MTN Nigeria has been able to register about 70 per cent of its subscribers.Also representatives from both Airtel and Etisalat also stressed the importance of why the regulator must put a date to end the exercise. According to them, there are more people outside there who are yet to register and except they are pushed they may not come up.IT will be recalled that the NCC had given both its agents and operators six-month period, which ended September 28 to register subscribers. The Commission's Head of Media and Spokesperson in an interview recently with The Guardian had informed that subscribers who are yet to register to use the harmonization period to register their SIMs.According to him, the harmonization period is data gathering and sorting period, stressing that; there was no end in sight now for the harmonization exercise now until all available datas gets to the commission.However, still at the Consumer Parliament, NCC's Director of Consumer Affairs, Mrs. Mary Uduma noted that SIM registration would not end because new subscribers are coming in everyday and the telecommunications firm will continue to register, 'but on the hamonisation, you must have heard my colleague saying that between now and end of the year, they should have completed details about the harmonization.'Meanwhile subscribers present at the parliament used the forum to urge NCC to checkmate the operators over what they described as 'unsolicited' text messages from the operators, which has become a torn on their flesh.
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