Confirmed! NCC lifts license suspension for Medallion

ITREALMS:

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has lifted the license suspension placed on Medallion Communications recently, just as the company described the initial suspension as shocking, ITRealms can confirm.

Affirming this development to ITRealms, the chief executive officer, Medallion Communications Limited, Mr. Ikechukwu Nnamani said that the recent suspension of the interconnect license of Medallion by the telecom regulator based on allegations of involvement on call masking, has been reversed, describing the suspension, a most unfortunate one.

“It is one that should have never happened in the first place. He confirmed the suspension has been lifted by the telecom regulator,” he insisted, stressing that initial reason given by the regulator was that the company was involved with call masking.

“We totally rejected that, since we knew we were never involved in call masking. It was practically impossible for us to be involved since we do not bring in international traffic into the country and all the calls we terminate on other networks was sent to them as we received it from the originating network. “It was, therefore, shocking and strange that the regulator would accuse us of call masking and even went ahead to suspend our interconnect license..,” he said.

Further, Nnamani said, they believe in the rule of law and the telecom industry in Nigeria operates under the guidelines of the Nigerian Communication Act 2003.

He pointed out that the Act stipulated that when an operator disagrees with any determination made against it by the Regulator, the licensee has the right to appeal and ask for a review of the decision and most importantly has the right to demand that a given written reasons why you were punished and the evidence against you so you can properly respond.

“In the event that you do that and there is still no agreement between the Regulator and the operator, the operator has the right to seek redress in the law court. In our case we wrote to the Regulator asking for evidence against us that indicates we were involved in call masking.  No evidence was presented to Medallion indicating we were involved in call masking.

“I am glad to report that following our appeal of the suspension the Regulator has lifted the suspension against Medallion and we are now able to run our interconnect business.  I am also glad this was resolved without Medallion needing to take the Regulator to court which was to be our next line of action if our request for review of the decision was not positive in line with the provisions of the Communication Act 2003,” he enthused.

ITRealms recalls that Medallion Communications has the most interconnected peering point in West Africa, with over 83 service providers, including all GSM, LTE, CDMA operators, Fixed Wireless and Fixed line operators connected to its infrastructure.

Chuks Egbune/GEE

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