An Agenda for Meeting Customer Expectations in Nigeria’s Telecommunication Market

A Lead Paper on the Theme

Transforming a Nation with Broadband Telecom
as an Instrument for Sustainable Development

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

• The Brainchild of the Summit Subject Matter
  • for appreciating the need to discuss all about Access, The Customer. Quality of service
• NCC
  • for being passionate about these matters
• Homage
  • Because they did it

 

SUBJECT OF DISCUSSION

The Options

• Meeting Customers Expectations: How the Least Nigerian can have qualitative Access
• Meeting Customers Expectations: Meeting the Last Mile for the Last Man
• Meeting Customers Expectation in Nigeria’s Telecom Market

 

Inference

• All the above show a commitment to The Customer, his/her expectations, Access, Affordable Service and Quality Service.

 

The Consensus Topic

An Agenda for Meeting Customers’ Expectations in Nigeria’s Telecommunication Market

 

Another Observation

• The organizers have shown awareness of  Pathway to Connecting the Last Man

 

• The Lecture discussed all that is in today’s subject except that it took Quality of Service for granted and while we look at today for the purpose of tomorrow, The Lecture looked at 30 years from today

 

• The issue reduces to taking off from that lecture, using its recommendations and adding others that emerge from this discussion.

 

What Pathway to Connecting The Last Man prescribed

The relevant ‘takeaway’ from Pathway to Connecting The Last Man

• A Total Planning Concept
• A Broadband Plan
• The Challenge of Regulation
• Spectrum Planning and Management

 

THE QUALITY OF SERVICE MATTER

• Prescribing KPIs is good and commendable
• But they have limitations in relation to Customers’ Expectations
• KPI’s are indices of Networks QoS on Offer
• They do not constitute the Customers’ Experience
• Customers Experience is the overall Quality of Service and not Quality of Service for individual networks.
• It is possible for KPI’s to be good and yet Customers’ experience may still be bad
• A shift of emphasis to Quality of Experience, QoE, as the important index of satisfying the Customer is recommended.
• QoE for something to correct
• QoS for something to penalize

 

THE OTHER ISSUES

 

What is the problem of the Nigerian telephone System?

• Has it been identified?
• If Yes, what is it?
• If No we request that the Commission institutes a technical study into the problem with a view to identifying it and applying a focused solution.

 

Consumer Protection

• Who protects the Consumer? Is it NCC, is it CPC or is it The Law?
• There must be a Contract between every consumer and every service provider
• The Consumer has a role to play by seeking redress for any injury.

 

Consumer Education

• Who educates the consumer? Regulator or Operator/Service Provider?

 

Harmful Content

• What constitutes harmful Content?
• What redress is available to the Consumer
• There must be a Contract between every consumer and every service provider

 

Redress Process

• The process must be made less cumbersome
• How does the Regulator view the Network of Networks?
• Poorly QoS Network in a Comity of Networks

 

RECOMMENDATIONS

 

OLD

• A total Planning Concept which asserts that it is viable to provide service for all citizens is best for our circumstance and therefore recommended
• A Broadband Plan that determines the future is commendable and should be sustained
• There is bound to be severe challenge to Regulation and all associated issues must be pursued

 

NEW

• NCC is advised to Institute a technical study to examine what exactly is wrong with and within the Networks, publish the findings of the study and thereafter apply focused solution.

 

• A service contract that exists between a service provider and a consumer should be made more enforceable rather than the regulator stopping at fighting the quality of service war only from its own observatory and on behalf of Consumers.

 

• What should matter to the consumer is Quality of Experience while the Quality of Service is left for the Regulator and the Operators to use in their relationship.

 

 

About the Author

Titi Omo-Ettu has more than three decades of active participation in the Nigerian telecommunication development. He is a telecommunications consultant and trainer with focus on developmental processes. He has been Consultant to the Nigerian Communications Commission from its inception in 1993 to date serving the Commission in the areas of industry studies and research, universal service plans and internet applications.He offers similar services to private sector clients.He is Managing Partner of Telecom Answers Associates, and founder of The Cyberschuul, a Lagos based telecommunications training Institute.

Read more of his presentations and articles at www.titiomoettu.com