The Nigerian Communications Commission has directed all telecom operators to notify consumers of major service disruptions and compensate them if the outages last longer than 24 hours.
This new regulation, which took immediate effect on Sunday, aims to improve accountability and transparency within the telecommunications industry.
According to a statement signed by the Commission’s Acting Head of Public Affairs, Nnenna Ukoha, the directive compels mobile network providers, internet service companies, and other last-mile operators to promptly inform users about service outages through various media platforms. Operators must also provide details about the cause, affected areas, and an estimated timeline for service restoration.
“The Commission is committed to enhancing the quality of experience for telecom subscribers,” Ukoha said. “These new guidelines are designed to ensure service providers take responsibility and keep the public fully informed.”
Operators are also mandated to issue advance notifications for planned maintenance or service interruptions, with at least a one-week notice.
The NCC highlighted that between May 1st and May 24th, all four major telecom operators—MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile—recorded multiple service disruptions. Globacom and 9mobile experienced the highest number of incidents, reporting 13 and 11 outages respectively, primarily due to fibre cuts and power failures in Lagos, Rivers, Ogun, and the Federal Capital Territory. MTN and Airtel reported five and four incidents respectively, with causes ranging from vandalism to equipment theft in states such as Benue, Imo, and Bayelsa.
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The new regulation mandates “proportional compensation” for affected users, such as service extension or data bonuses, in accordance with the Consumer Code of Practice.
The Commission defines a major outage as one that affects at least five percent of a provider’s subscribers or disrupts services in five or more local government areas. Other conditions include unplanned outages impacting 100 or more network sites or any quality degradation in Nigeria’s top 10 traffic-heavy states.
To monitor compliance, the NCC has launched a Major Outage Reporting Portal on its official website. This platform will publicly log network outages and disclose the entities responsible for infrastructure sabotage or failure.
Speaking on the development, Edoyemi Ogor, Director of Technical Standards and Network Integrity at the NCC, stated: “We have tested this reporting system with operators over the past few months. The goal is to entrench a culture of openness and responsibility in the sector.”
He further emphasized that this move supports the enforcement of the Executive Order issued by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, which classifies telecom infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure.
“Protecting these assets is vital to national security and economic resilience. Our aim is to ensure that operators and saboteurs alike are held accountable,” Ogor added.
The Commission encouraged the public to access the portal at www.ncc.gov.ng for updates on reported outages and efforts to restore services.
