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N44.00 per minute for GSM calls?
Posted by Afam on October 25, 2008, 4:17 pm
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When will Nigerians have an easy reference to all the call rates from all telecommunication companies that provide voice services to Nigerians? I stopped wondering why I kept getting the "Your balance is low, please recharge" kind of messages when I decided to check my balance before and after making a full 1 minute call from my GSM line to another GSM line. N44.00 just left my phone just like that.
Sometimes last year or 2 years ago I believe competition made some of the GSM companies to reduce their tarrifs from average of N40.00 to N50.00 to N30.00 to N40.00 and in some cases as low as N20.00 plus if you qualify through some not too clear conditions and formulas.
How many Nigerians actually know what these companies take from their phones each time they make calls?
Even the Family and Friends tarrif of one of the GSM companies has increased from N12.00 per minute to 50% of regular call rates which should be in the neighbourhood of N22.00 (well, about N19.00 since it's intra network calls).
Why would these companies bombard us with adverts on radio, TV, bill boards etc when they want to reduce tarrif and when it comes to increase they implement the increase without any fanfare or adverts. You may be lucky to know what is going on when you take time to read the message that accompanies the credit recharge confirmation.
And this is not a GSM limited problem. I recently followed a N16.80k promise by a PTO for GSM calls and loaded N1,000.00 and proceeded to make some GSM calls.
Agreed, the charge was lower but certainly not at the advertised rate as my mathematics isn't too bad to know that 10 minutes call should be around N168.00 but over N270.00 was gone when I checked my balance.
Even 5% VAT cannot be responsible for this appreciable difference so what is really going on?
Again, one must not forget that the NCC organises Consumer Parliament from time to time but the NCC must realize that the plethora of complaints (on daily basis) and unfair or illegal deductions from subscribers lines cannot be sorted out or adequately addressed in air conditioned seminar halls where representatives of these companies come to read out scripts written by their employers.
Is the NCC really capable of enforcing anything when it comes to the quality of service? If yes, why are these companies getting away with such illegal deduction? If no, why?
We cannot all pretend that all is well when things are going they way they currently are.
Maybe when we can access truly broadband internet Nigerians may turn to VOIP calls as the only hope as such solutions come with reasonable transparent billing system and online usage tracking that makes any audit easy and stress free.
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