The Consumers Empowerment Organisation of Nigeria (CEON) has filed a formal complaint against mobile service operators Airtel, Globacom and MTN with the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) for alleged anti-competitive conduct.
“As a consumer advocacy group, our interest in this matter is based on our concern that such discriminatory conduct by these GSM services providers is capable of distorting competition in the mobile content application space through constraining the choice of consumers, reducing output and retarding innovation, hence we see the need for the Commission’s intervention,” CEON said in a statement.
The complaint arose out of comments by Executive Vice- Chairman of NCC, Eugene Juwah, when he advised telecommunications subscribers to “protect their right by reporting any unfair practice by the telecoms operators including extreme poor service quality to the appropriate authorities,” wrote Nigeria’s This Day.
In a letter to This Day, “CEON urged the NCC to determine if the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) service providers was engaging in ‘concerted practices’ between themselves by collectively discriminating in providing access to their network infrastructure to competing Mobile Content Service Providers (MCSPs).”
It is expected that the NCC will issue a written notice to the parties concerned.
Charlie Fripp – Consumer Tech editor
