The Curious Case of Consumer Dissatisfaction in Nigerian Telecommunications Sector

The Nigerian telecommunications sector has experienced substantial growth in a little over a decade. With over 113 million active mobile lines by the end of 2012, Nigeria has become the largest telecommunications sector in Africa in terms of subscriber numbers and one of the fastest growing telecommunications markets in the world. A corollary to this remarkable growth has been persistent consumer dissatisfaction with the quality of telecommunications services offered with the four existing GSM mobile telecommunications operators fined a total of one billion one hundred and seventy million Naira for the poor quality of their services in 2012 alone. These quality of service problems, have been attributed to inefficiencies in the operational activities of the operators, who have in turn blamed it on peculiar features of the Nigerian environment in which they operate. Utilizing publicly available information, this article seeks to critically appraise the issues around poor quality of service in the Nigeria telecommunications sector and proffer suggestions for resolving them. The paper is divided into four parts beginning with an introduction. The second part identifies the causes of poor service quality while the third part appraises the different regulatory responses to poor service quality including; quality of service regulation, regulation of promotional activities and advertisements, regulation of interconnection disconnection, mobile number portability, tariff regulation and ensuring billing accuracy, and consumer code and consumer dispute resolution. The final part presents the article’s main findings, conclusions and recommendations.