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The aggressive advertising by telecommunication operators and telemarketing companies in Nigeria has left a sore taste in the mouth of many Nigerians as unsolicited messages have now turned to a nuisance to most of the populace.
Nowadays a wide range of products and services is offered through telemarketing which results in inconvenience and disturbance to telecom consumers. These short message service (SMS) hit the cell phones of consumers at intervals daily thus bringing a lot of discomfort to the consumers.
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Most Nigerians have individual tale of woe which is normally associated with unsolicited SMS from telecomm operators.
Narrating her experience, Ada Ozougwu lamented that she mistakenly followed a voice prompt and subsequently entered into an unwanted package that costs her so much money each month.
She disclosed that at the end of the first month the voice prompt came again but she refused to pick it and shortly after the call, she got a text message telling her that she has successfully subscribed for the package and since then, her money is deducted at the end of each month.
Ozougwu further revealed that once she loads at the end of the month, her money will be automatically deducted without her applying. As a result, she said she deliberately refused to recharge her phone for a while but as soon as she resumed, the supposed backlog was deducted even while she did not consciously access the product.?
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“Some months ago, I got a call from a four digit number which prompted me to press one, not knowing that telecomm operators have graduated from sending text messages to voice prompts I pressed one. The voice prompt subsequently told me that I have successfully subscribed for a beauty tip package and the charge will be deducted from my balance.
Since then my phone was continually flooded with unwelcomed junk messages. The worst is that I don’t know how to unsubscribe because there is no provision for that. I have tried calling the service provider on numerous occasions but I’ve not been able to get through because of the rigorous waiting which I was subjected to before you can speak with the customer care center”, she explained.
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Another telecomm consumer, Ibrahim Yusuf, said that the service providers are abusing consumers with unsolicited text messages.
“I use three networks and none of them is free of this crime. If you go through my text messages now, you will find over a hundred text messages which are meaningless and useless. Some of the networks immediately you check your credit, it’ll be like a reminder that you are a subscriber, they will start flooding your box with sms.
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It has gotten so bad that some of the service providers now advertise home appliances including television sets via text messages which is uncalled for”, Yusuf said.
Recently, the telecommunication operator’s regulatory body, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) gave a directive that all SIM cards issued by telecommunication operators in Nigeria should be registered.
The SIM card registration exercise which runs from March 28 to September 28, 2011, is meant to capture the biometrics of telecommunication users, which includes the name, address, state of origin, picture and thumb print of telecomm consumers; this was introduced in a bid to curb the high rise in crime rate in the country.
Under the regulation guiding the registration of SIM cards all new SIM cards purchased from February 14, 2011, can only receive calls and text messages, but cannot originate calls or receive text messages until they are registered with the appropriate operator which issued the new SIM cards while existing SIM cards are captured by the NCC employed registrars.?
The new SIM card registration directive given by the NCC has further occasioned a new twist to the scenario as it has added to the SMS blast by operators who keep sending indiscriminate SMS to consumers – to those who have already been captured in the exercise and those who have yet ?to be captured.
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Linda Kalu went as far as questioning the authenticity of the exercise as her service providers keep flooding her phone with text messages urging her to go and register even though she has registered her SIM cards months ago.
“I get an SMS from my service providers almost on a daily basis even though I have registered my SIM card some months ago. This makes me wonder if the registration exercise is genuine and one can’t also help but wonder if there is a proper record of those that have registered their SIM cards since they keep harassing people with SMS to go and register.
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Speaking on these issues in an exclusive chat with LEADERSHIP SUNDAY, the Head, Media and Public Relations, NCC, Reuben Mouka said all the issues raised by consumers have been appropriately handled by the regulatory body.
On unsolicited SMS, Mouka said that telecommunication consumers are ignorant of their responsibilities in using their phones.
He said, “A lot of people are ignorant of their responsibilities in using their phones so whatever happens they just blame the operator, if not the operator they blame the NCC. People should be responsible to their phones.”
According to him, a lot of unsolicited messages come by the fault of subscribers because most of them do not read the content of the text message before they subscribe.
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“For example you may see zero sum game plus 1 subscribe, they will subscribe so when they start getting messages they start saying they’re getting unsolicited messages while they solicited for those text messages and they can go and stop receiving it if they get tired of it
Take for instance, even the caller tones, they send you every month, if you want this caller tunes do this, but they also say if you want to unsubscribe you unsubscribe. So a lot of people ? unsubscribe, and you can even call the service provider to stop it permanently” he stated.
He added that as far as unsolicited text messages are concerned the regulatory body does not believe that it has become an issue in the industry because one of the major ways telecomm operators use it was through promo.
“But now, we hardly approve the promo by operators. I think for a long time now we have come off it because primarily, most of the unsolicited text messages come when they are running promos and we have stopped a number of promos that the service providers are doing” he said.
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On the issue of SIM card registration, Mouka said the registration was authentic and urged consumers who have already registered to ignore such text messages from service providers.?
“They keep sending those text messages because SIM card registration exercise is still ongoing. The commission has not yet compiled the names of those who have registered, so because the service providers do not yet have the compiled list of those who have registered they just send out SMS to everyone using their network.
But we have directed them to stop sending out the SMS until the end of the exercise when we must have compiled the names of those who have registered their SIM cards”, he concluded.