The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has issued a directive requiring telecom operators to promptly notify customers about significant service disruptions. The alerts must detail the cause of the outage, affected areas, and estimated restoration time, communicated through appropriate media platforms.
Operators are also mandated to inform customers at least seven days in advance of planned service interruptions. This directive applies to all mobile network operators, internet service providers, and last-mile service providers.
In cases where outages exceed 24 hours, operators must provide compensation such as validity extensions, following the Consumer Code of Practice Regulations.
The NCC defines major outages as network issues affecting at least 5% of an operator’s subscribers or spanning five or more Local Government Areas (LGAs), unplanned isolation of network resources at 100 or more sites or 5% of total sites, or any disruption degrading service quality in the top ten states by traffic volume.
To enforce transparency, all major outages must be reported through the publicly accessible Major Outage Reporting Portal on the NCC website. The portal offers real-time outage updates and identifies responsible parties.
Edoyemi Ogor, Director of Technical Standards and Network Integrity at NCC, highlighted that the portal was rigorously tested with operators before the directive’s release to ensure accountability and support efforts to hold saboteurs responsible.
This initiative aligns with President Bola Tinubu’s Executive Order designating telecommunications infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII), emphasizing the importance of protecting these assets for national security, economic stability, and daily life in Nigeria.
