It's Now N4 For all SMS's!

                           


It would interest all texters in the country to know that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has set a tariff cap of N4 per SMS for all domestic off-net SMS.

The tariff cap - which is in line with the mandate of the commission - will take effect from February 5, 2013. It said it had sent this directive to all operators in the country since January 3, 2013.

In case you were wondering. . . 'all' means ALL. . . The Code Division Multiple Access operators including Starcomms, Visafone and Multi Links are also affected by the new directive.

The Director, Legal and Regulatory Services of NCC, Josephine Amuwa - who signed the directive issued yesterday - warned that the commission would monitor compliance by the operators, and noted that failure to comply would attract penalty as provided by Section 111 of the NCA 2003.

She also informed that the NCC arrived at the new price cap after due considerations of the submissions made by the operators at various consultative meetings.

Amuwa also stated that the operators had proposed a price cap ranging between N5 and N10 per message for off-net SMS. However, the NCC set the N4 cap, after evaluating and analysing SMS traffic information provided by the operators, noting that “there was a general recognition that the cost of SMS is too high, especially in view of the interconnection rate of N1.02 for SMS as determined by the Commission in 2009.”

The present off-net (Between networks) SMS tariff ranges between N9 to N10, while on-net (Within same network) goes for N5

We welcome this development wholeheartedly. In fact, we envision a time (Hopefully not too far into the future) when SMS text services will be free.

At the same time we expect the NCC to focus its attention and searchlight on the areas of voice calls and data services.

The voice calls especially is a drag. A certain network I use, whose voice call service I'd hitherto been applauding as legendary in quality, has suddenly dropped. It's a crying shame.

You know yourselves. . . Yeah, you!