More than five million MTN subscribers in Nigeria
were on Thursday disconnected from the network after the review of their
registration documents, thereby cutting the company’s full-year forecast for
subscriber numbers.
The spokesperson for the MTN Group, Nik Kershaw,
said, “MTN, which operates in more than 20 countries across the Middle East and
Africa, had 5.1 million subscribers cut off in Nigeria, its biggest market, at
the end following checks on personal documents.
The company is also facing ongoing regulatory
restrictions related to its market-leading position in Africa’s most populous
country.”
Kershaw, however, said that about 3.4 million of the
subscribers might have been reconnected, following steps to correct the
irregularities in their registration documents.
The development, our correspondent learnt, was the
fallout of the Nigerian Communications Commission’s sanction in August on
telecommunications firms over improper Subscriber Identification Module
registration.
The firms were asked to pay N120.4m in fines for
failing to fully comply with the directive of the commission to deactivate
pre-registered and defective SIM cards.
While MTN, which has over 62 million subscribers on
its network, was asked to pay N102.2m; Globacom was slammed with N7.4m;
Etisalat, N7m; and Airtel, N3.8m.
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