Subscribers on MTN, Airtel, Glo and 9mobile networks have expressed their displeasure over the poor quality of service they have been experiencing in the past one week.
The subscribers, who spoke Newsmen, complained of weak Internet connections, low Internet speed, dropped calls and weak signals among others.
Major complaints from Airtel and Glo subscribers were about regular disruption of Internet connectivity when browsing on their mobile devices or personal computers.
An Airtel subscriber, Ngozi Madusha, complained of abrupt disruption or disconnection whenever she links up to virtual meetings, especially on Zoom.
A Lagos-based Globacom subscriber, Doyin Bamidele, said, “Glo signal is poor in my area, making browsing frustrating at times.
“Although, I enjoy bonuses from the network, the service is not satisfactory.”
A subscriber to MTN based in Ogun State, Ayo Martins, lamented that making calls successfully had been difficult as he had been experiencing dropped calls.
“Completing a conversation that will last for 30 minutes has been difficult. Most times, the calls are abruptly cut off. Sometimes, I call just one person up to 10 times before we finish our conversation,” he said.
For Funke Adesina, who is a subscriber to the 9mobile network, the major complaint was that data gets exhausted quickly.
Director of Operations, Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria, Mr Gbolahan Awonuga, said network congestion still persisted because most people were still working from home despite the easing of the lockdown.
“There is still network congestion because we still have a lot of people who have not returned to work; they are working from home. Students are also at home. Even most telecoms operators have their workers working from home,” he said.
He attributed the high rate of dropped calls to inadequate infrastructure, saying there was need to deploy more new sites across the country.
President, Association of Telecommunication Companies of Nigeria, Mr Olusola Teniola, said that the telecom network in the country was built mostly for voice services.
He said there was an urgent need to build infrastructure that would support a digital economy.
Teniola said, “The implementation of the Nigerian National Broadband Plan will give us an opportunity to build a network for the future.
“We don’t have a network for the future. We have a network that is built purely for voice. We now need a network that is for the digital economy.”
He added that a network for the future that would support a digital economy should have speed of 50 megabyte per second and above.
He said, “In other jurisdictions, they have been facing congestion because this pandemic is unprecedented. We already have small incidences of fibre to homes in Lekki, Ikoyi and Maitama. We need to be able to ensure that Internet speed is high so that the user experience is what one would expect.”
He called for the support of the government in the areas of access to foreign exchange and facilitating easy clearance of equipment at the ports.
Punch
