The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has issued a new directive requiring telecom operators to compensate consumers for major service disruptions lasting more than 24 hours.
Under the Consumer Code of Practice Regulations, compensation may include validity extensions and other applicable benefits. Operators must also disclose the cause of outages, affected areas, and estimated restoration times via the NCC’s Major Outage Reporting Portal.
According to Nnenna Ukoha, Acting Head of Public Affairs at NCC, this move ensures better transparency and enhances customer experience. Edoyemi Ogor, Director of Technical Standards, emphasized that the policy promotes accountability, especially for sabotage-related incidents.
Planned outages must now be communicated at least one week in advance. This initiative supports the Federal Government’s directive designating telecom infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII).
What Counts as a Major Outage?
The NCC defines major outages as:
- Disruptions affecting 5% or more subscribers or 5+ LGAs.
- Isolation at 100+ sites or 5% of total sites.
- Severe degradation in the top 10 traffic-heavy states.
All such events must be reported on the NCC’s public outage portal, offering transparency to consumers and stakeholders.
