Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC) has again put mobile operators on an imminent data tariff hike alert. A source knowledgeable on the issue told BusinessDay that the NCC is not going back on the planned hike and it is certain to take effect sometime this year.
It will be recalled that the commission had first postponed the hike in November when subscribers on social media expressed outrage after they receiving news of the planned implementation on 1 December from one of the operators. The presidency promptly denied knowledge of the hike while the senate said it will not grant approval if approached and advised NCC to rescind the decision.
“The NCC directive will benefit operators with minority subscriber market share like Etisalat and Airtel. MTN and Globacom are not really interested, if they have their way they will stop it,” the source said.
The NCC will be hurting competition between the two big players in the telecom industry, “In fact, the deal does not favour Globacom. If anything, it takes away the advantage it has over the others. The operator built its own submarine cable so it does not pay a third person. That is why its data prices are very low.
“MTN on the other hand wants to give Glo a run for its money and control the market share too. That is how the market is supposed to be, but the smaller operators do not want that. They are the ones that have been complaining to NCC to do something about it.”
More details later…
