Sustaining the Competition, Consumer Protection and Mobile Number Portability in the Nigerian Telecommunications Market

Abstract

The Nigerian mobile telecommunications market has continued to grow in leaps and bounds creating opportunities for further investments. These investments have continued to increase exponentially in proportion to the increase in the subscribers’ base which currently stands at 96,110,538 connected lines. This has made the Nigerian telecommunications market the largest in the whole of Africa and the fastest growing from a developing nation. The service providers have continued to introduce innovative service offerings to their numerous customers. The latest addition to this is the proposed mobile number portability to be superintended by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) which is supposed to go live on the network of all mobile service providers before the ending of 2010. This service will enable mobile subscribers to retain their mobile numbers when changing service providers.

No doubt, this will create more value for mobile subscribers who will not have to incur more costs when switching service providers.

This article highlights instances where competition and or consumer protection issues are likely to undermine the rationale of NCC for mandating mobile number portability in the Nigerian telecommunications market. It also looks at the new role of the NCC as the sector regulator in addressing issues arising from the new regime.

Keywords: Mobile number portability