The giant Telecom company, MTN Nigeria, yesterday confirmed that it has suspended its plan to implement charges on the Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) code being used for bank transactions.
The suspension came on the heels of the directive given by
the Minister of Communications, Dr. Isa Pantami, calling on the Nigerian
Communications Commission (NCC), the telecoms industry regulator, to ensure
that the planned implementation of the USSD code charges are suspended.
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Senior Manager, External Relations at MTN Nigeria, Mr. Funso Aina, confirmed to ThisDay yesterday that the telecommunications company had complied with the suspension order.
Aina told the Newspaper that the implementation process was to commence on Monday, but that MTN did not commence the implementation, based on the minister’s directive.
“We did not commence the planned implementation of the charges as earlier stated. We had planned that it would take effect from Monday and we had already notified our subscribers, but eventually we had to put it on hold, based on the minister’s directive that we should suspend our implementation plan,” Aina said.
Also confirming compliance with the suspension order, the
spokesperson to the Minister of Communications, Mrs. Uwa Suleiman, said: “MTN
has no choice but to comply with the directive of the Honourable Minister of
Communications. Now that it has been suspended, we will set up monitoring team
to ensure full compliance of the directive.”
When asked if the federal government would stop the charges
totally or review it downwards from the N4 that MTN had planned, Suleiman said
the directive was for MTN to suspend the planned implementation and that
details of how the minister would tackle the issue in collaboration with the
CBN would be made public as events unfold.
Before the minister’s directive, the Governor of Central
Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Mr. Godwin Emefiele, had directed the commercial banks
and other financial institutions under its regulation to shun the move by
telecommunication companies to impose charges on USSD services.
Some telcos had recently sent notices to their customers
about the new charge.
For instance, MTN had in a notice to its customers said it
would charge N4 per 20 seconds for USSD access to banking services with effect
from October 21.
USSD is a Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication
technology that is used to send text between a mobile phone and an application
programme in the network.
But in a swift response, Emefiele had directed the banks to
move their services to telcos that were willing to offer such service at the
lowest or even zero charges.
“About five months
ago, I held a meeting with some telecoms companies and leading banks in
Nigeria, at the CBN in Lagos and the issue on cost of USSD came up. We came to
a conclusion that the use of USSD is a sunk cost, meaning that it is not an
additional cost on the infrastructure of the telecoms companies. But the
telecoms companies disagreed with us and said it was an additional investment
in infrastructure and that for that reason, they needed to impose the charge. I
appealed to them to please review this downwards and they refused,” the CBN governor
had explained.
Following Emefiele’s directive, the Chief Executive Officers
(CEOs) of commercial banks came out to distance themselves from the moves by
MTN Nigeria to impose the charges.
The bank chief executives under the aegis of Body of Bank CEOs
that have the MD/CEO of Access Bank Plc, Mr. Herbert Wigwe, as chairman, had
said in a statement that they never asked MTN to start charging customers as
contained in the text message sent by the telecommunication company.
Meanwhile, the President of the Association of Telecoms
Companies of Nigeria (ATCON), Mr. Olusola Teniola, has called on the CBN to
hold a strategic meeting with the NCC, the Ministry of Communications and the
telecoms operators, to develop a framework that is acceptable to mobile network
operators (MNOs) on bank charges, using USSD code.
Commenting on the public reactions that greeted the planned
implementation of the USSD charges by MTN, Teniola told THISDAY that the whole
reactions could be described as a litmus test for the CBN in the proper
management of the situation and still remain focused on its financial inclusion
strategies, designed to deepen financial inclusion across the country.
He is of the view that if the situation is not properly
managed, it could stifle financial inclusion growth across the country.
He said CBN and the banks must understand and accept that
technology has come to stay in the financial services industry in rolling out
technology solutions that provide access to banking services.
He called on CBN to see telcos as major players and key contributors to financial inclusion growth in the country.
Source : ThisDAY