Omo-Ettu canvasses special students’ tariffs

Omo-Ettu, President, ATCON

President of the Association of Telecommunications Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Titi Omo-Ettu has canvassed the re-introduction of students’ tariffs in the nation’s telecommunications industry.

Speaking at a one-day Industry Consumer Advisory Forum (ICAF) organized by the Consumer Bureau of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) in Lagos, Mr. Omo-Ettu said that students must have a different tariff plans across board.

According to him, it’s lamentable that students in the nation’s higher institutions are paying the same tariffs like their guardians, which in other words are being paid by the same parents or guardians.

He noted that this was in existence in the early days of Nigeria’s independence until when the Nigerian Telecommunications (NITEL) became incapacitated.

Dwelling on “Providing Customer Centric Services – The Role of Service Providers” Omo-Ettu also noted that there are some challenges facing the operators including what he described as harsh and unfair operating environment.

As said by him, Customer Centric Situation must be based on good research and market study, with deliberate attention given to customers’ inadequacies, mostly people with disability, even as there must be discriminatory tariff not occasioned by promos but by requirements of consumers.

He outlined causes’ analysis of operation in Nigeria to include improved network access, which emphasis on marketing; poor call completion rate, which he attributed to poor emphasis on engineering maintenance.

Improved network expansion, ATCON boss said, has emphasis on marketing, while the inelegant customer relations were blamed on social malady.

For Omo-Ettu, what make the customer the issue is that he or she is the real source of revenue for service providers, especially when service is relevant to his or her needs.

Additionally, he said, a change in behaviour could be critical, warning that careless experimentations with customers could lead to a switch off, thus lost revenue.

Just as response to changes either way could be for when quality of service (QoS) improves or dips, maintaining that customers could influence other customers, especially in cases of notable customer care relations.

Omo-Ettu pointed out that customer-centric services phenomenon dictates that a strategy of orientation of service providers towards the needs of customers rather than the normal drivers of profit at all cost serves as a guarantee for long term profit.

These, he said, at times sounds like gospel but usually a lip service matter on the part of the operators, stressing that signs of its absence manifest only when customers have to be wooed with promos, which in some cases are outright deceit.

He maintained that ATCON’s expectations from industry players in return to respective all laws of the land, all interventions of the industry regulator, all labour laws and respect for industry relations with employees, customers and consumers.

These, he said, are embedded in ATCON’s mandate which is to work in collaboration with government, the regulator, other industry players and consumers to protect investments in the Nigerian telecommunications industry.

Remmy Nweke
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