Telcom operators given June 26 deadline to begin compulsory rollover of data

The Federal Government has given operators in the nation’s telecommunication industry to begin data rollover from June 26.

This means that telecom operators must henceforth add a subscriber’s unused or unfinished data to his new or next data subscription.

Before this new directive from the Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) subscribers’ unfinished or unused data subscription automatically became useless as soon as it hit the expiry date.

The NCC’s Executive Vice Chairman, Prof Garba Umar Danbatta, speaking on Thursday said telecom operators must begin the implementation of the data rollover directive from June 26, 2018.

Danbatta gave the marching order at the 95th Consumers Outreach Programme in Dutse, Jigawa State.

The NCC boss, who was represented by the Head of Information and Reference Unit of the commission, Alhaji Ismail Adedigba, said failure by the operators to start implementing the directive would attract N5m fine on each subscriber which they failed to roll over.

“The NCC has directed the telecom service providers in the country to begin the implementation of data rollover on June 26, 2018. They have been duly informed about this and they have also been given adequate time to prepare their networks for it.

“Failure to implement this will attract N5m fine on the first of failure on each SIM card and N500,000 on each day that follows the first default date.

“All these are to ensure that the consumers’ rights, privileges and interests are adequately protected,” he said.

The Governor of Jigawa State, Abubakar Badaru, said the NCC should work on closing the access gaps in the state.

Represented at the occasion by his Deputy, Barrister Ibrahim Hassan Hadeija, he said the NCC and the operators should do more to make e-learning popular among students by crashing the prices of data subscription.