By The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), has assured other key players and less dominant telecoms operators in the industry that as a regulator, it will not allow the industry to slide into a state of monopoly.
According to the Commission, its essence of regulation of competition in the sector is one of such way of ensuring that no operator is push out business stressing that MTN Nigeria is almost monopolising the market.
Speaking at an event in Lagos, Southwest Nigeria, Director at the Policy and Process Department, Mrs Nwabuago Okorie, noted that if the Commission does not regulate competition, one day an operator will run another out of business adding that “that’s why we always keep our eyes on competition, to make sure that the competition in the telecom industry is very healthy.”
She said that beyond regulation on commission, the eyes of the NCC is equally on the regulation of services in the industry saying that “this is why we talk about all these value-added services, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter. We create a platform for all these value-added services too. So these are the things that the NCC regulates.”
She added: “We have to regulate competition. If we don’t regulate competition, just like I said, MTN already has over 50% of the market share. So if we don’t regulate properly as a regulator, MTN will monopolize the market. And when there’s monopoly, it’s a problem because they can’t set any standard. They can’t set any price for us. So that’s why we regulate competition.”
she explained that there there are some Acts or some instruments that empower NCC to develop regulations, and that there are the NCC has competition policy to control competition in the industry saying, “every operator operating in Nigeria was provided with thes competition policies. And there are so many things the operator can do that can amount to unhealthy competition.”
Harping on how far the regulator can go to make sure that the competition in the telecommunication industry is very healthy, she said that “we always put a flashlight on all these operators to make sure that there’s no anti-competitive behavior. Especially when we know that MTN Nigeria has over 50% of the market share.”
She disclosed: “our compliance monitoring and enforcement department is always on top of their services to monitor the activities of these operators to make sure that there’s no anti-competitive behavior. And we have some of the things we call the anti-competitive behavior. When you refuse to share infrastructure with the next operator, it amounts to anti-competitive behavior.”
According to her, the Commission is very mindful about the regulation of type approve the equipment they are using, to make sure that it’s up to standard adding, “When we talk about competition, we regulate competition in the industry. Earlier on I said that NPN is almost monopolizing the market.”
Okorie said that “when you displace a price below the cap, you are now bringing an unhealthy competition to the operator. So our responsibility as the regulator is to protect the younger operators, to make sure that the giant operators do not set them out of the market so that there will be competition.”
While highlighting the working relationship of the NCC with the International Telecommunications Union, particularly with reference telecom resource management among stakeholders, she said: “we have a global regulator that is in charge of telecommunication and that is called the International Telecommunications Union. They are based in Geneva. (9:45) So as we make regulations for telecoms in Nigeria, we also derive our power from the ITU.”
According to her, the ITU leads the global decision for telecommunications in the whole world and that the NCC also derive her power from the ITU, saying the ITU is in charge of standardisation as well as being in charge of World Radio Communication Conference and making laws for the development sector.
