Our Reporter
Telecoms operators have appealed to the Federal Government for special protection to safeguard their facilities to enhance good network.
Subscribers have persistently complained of poor telephone services, dropped calls, undelivered text messages, among others.
The operators said the situation might remain if increasing vandalism and theft of telecoms facilities, as well as cable breakages affected by road construction, among others, were not addressed.
Director of Corporate Communications and CSR at Airtel Nigeria Emeka Opara said the Federal Government must deal with vandalism, insecurity and insurgency, otherwise the spate of dropped calls experienced by consumers would continue.
Opara noted that declaring telecoms infrastructure as critical would safeguard the facilities.
He said Airtel recorded 1,022 fibre cuts between July 2019 and last month.
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According to him, 405 cases of the fibre cuts were due to road rehabilitation while 617 cases were by vandals.
Opara urged the Federal Government to come to their aid, and appealed for haste in the approval process for the Right of Way (RoW) for fibre deployment and Environmental Impact Analysis (EIA).
He said these would solve network congestion and failure.
Director of Technical Services at Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) Bako Wakil said the challenges might persist because of vandalism and this had led to high rates of drop calls.
He said the NCC had been working with the National Assembly, ministries and security agencies to ensure the bill was passed into law and offenders prosecuted.
Wakil said NCC would ensure services were improved by ensuring that the environment become conducive.
