The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has issued a directive requiring telecommunications operators to inform consumers of significant service disruptions through media platforms and provide proportional compensation, such as extended service validity, in line with the Consumer Code of Practice Regulations.
Nnenna Ukoha, Acting Head of Public Affairs at the NCC, announced that operators must disclose the cause of outages, affected areas, and estimated restoration times. The directive aims to enhance transparency, improve consumer experience, and ensure timely resolution of network disruptions.
Edoyemi Ogor, NCC’s Director of Technical Standards and Network Integrity, revealed that the Commission trialed the reporting process and its Major Outage Reporting Portal with operators for several months before formalizing the directive. “By providing timely and transparent information on network outages, we are fostering accountability and ensuring culprits are held responsible for sabotage to telecommunications infrastructure,” Ogor stated.
The NCC also mandated that operators notify consumers one week in advance of planned outages. This aligns with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Executive Order designating telecommunications infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII), emphasizing its role in national security, economic stability, and daily life.
The directive categorizes major outages into three types: network issues affecting five percent or more of an operator’s subscriber base or five or more Local Government Areas (LGAs), caused by factors like fibre cuts, vandalism, or force majeure; unplanned outages impacting 100 or more sites, five percent of total sites, or one cluster for 30 minutes or more; and outages degrading network quality in the top 10 high-traffic states, as periodically determined by the NCC.
Operators, including Mobile Network Operators and Internet Service Providers, must report all major outages via the NCC’s publicly accessible Major Outage Reporting Portal, which details the cause of each disruption. For outages lasting over 24 hours, operators are required to provide compensation, such as extended service validity, to affected consumers.
