Poor GSM Services In Nigeria

by Olusola Oyewola
2007-01-22 06:54:44 | Viewed 5630 times

In the past few years, Africa so often left behind by other economic and technological advances has seen rapid development in the use of mobile phones. The rate at which subscribers grow on the African continent is overwhelming and the development brought as a result of this is tremendous. This development seems to be more apparent in the sub-Saharan countries, which have experienced a turn-around in the way they transact business and other economic activities.

However, the benefits and development enjoyed so far from this technological innovation are being threatened by the quality of services offer by mobile phone operators. The service being offered seem to be deteriorating or at least not as good as compared to the time when they rolled out. In Nigeria, subscribers are faced with many frustrations resulting from poor services.

Let us consider their basic service, which is voice call. To place a local call within the same network at times could be as frustrating as trying to decode a difficult program. This network problem is so bad that callers sometime resolve to using other means of communication if affordable - and for those who could not opt for this, they would have to wait and try their luck sometime later. Inter-network calls is even more frustrating. Sometimes, one's call can be diverted to the voice mail system without warning and of course your account is charged for that. More often than not callers were forced to abandon their important calls and opted for other means and where this was not available they just waited until their calls finally went through which might be almost late if not late already for the purpose of which the call was to be placed.

The situation has become unbearable for subscribers operating call centers, who offer call services at retail prices. They spend certain amount of money on booster cards that have limited validity (usually a month), to enable them make calls at lower tariffs. During the period of this “network inactiveness,” which mostly occurs in the evening when they expected to make huge sales, not only are they losing the money paid on such booster cards, but they are also losing customers who would want to make use of the service. I was at a call center the other time to place some very important calls because it was cheaper doing so. The operator of the call center politely told me my calls would not go through, I felt disappointed but was not ready to leave until I know the reason behind this. The distress on his face said it all, he offered to explain that his account had been suspended just after he recharged the airtime on his booster and as a result calls could not go through so business was closed within this period. He said all the efforts made to reach the customer care center number proved futile, “The last time something like this happened, my account was not released until the next day and the amount I recharged was not accounted for immediately” he explained. He pointed that they experienced such and worst situations, without any prior notice.

Not only this, the automatic response of network status of these mobile phone operators are not reliable, one cannot differentiate when a number is actually out of network reach from when it is switched-off. This is because, if you placed a call from your mobile phone, you might be told the number was switched off, if you re-dialed the same number immediately, you would be surprised that the number would go through. At other times, you dial a number it goes through immmediately without any ringing or connection tone. All these amount to poor services.

As if all these are not enough, the call rate is high when compare with that of other operator in neighboring countries. Although, the fixed wireless operators are charging reasonable amount and their services are well commended, they are only limited to few geographical areas.

While we will remain thankful to whoever introduced mobile telephony to the African continent and to Nigeria in particular, we would not relent in ensuring that quality services as being enjoyed in other places does not elude us. Nigeria is a very friendly market for mobile communications but to be able to make full advantage, the operators need to improve on the quality of services being offered. Perhaps the existing operators have made more revenue than they expected, then it is high time others too were given the chance to operate, and give the best services mobile telephony can offer. With millions of Nigerians yet to be connected, there is sure a huge market to tap-into.

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The author, Olusola Oyewola, is a subscriber of one of the cellular networks in Nigeria, and until very recently, a student of Federal University of Technology, Akure in Nigeria.

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