The Nigeria Communications Commission (NCC) has revealed that the price of data will be changed as soon as the ongoing cost-based research is done with.
The Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Umar Garba Dambatta made this known while speaking with the journalists.
This planned development is in response to the growing usage of data plans by Nigerian consumers.
Dambatta said:
“We have noticed that the level of data usage is growing. This attests to the earlier assertion by the NCC that data is going to be the next frontier.
“You recall that NCC attempted to do the interim price floor for data in order to ensure that we do not have a price war in the data sub-segment of the industry.
“This of course met with resistance from the consumers; and because the NCC is a listening agency, we suspended the interim price floor.
“As I am talking to you, there is a cost-based study going on in order to arrive at an accepted, affordable data price floor which will come into force as soon as the consultants’ work is concluded.
“That is, as soon as the outcome of this consultancy that is on-going over data price is discussed,.as usual, and is further consulted upon with other stakeholders who we expect will provide useful information towards arriving at an acceptable price floor for data.”
The Vice-Chairman also mentioned the intention of the commission to avail palliatives for smaller operators in the telecommunication industry.
“We are also looking at other temporary measures in other to ensure that data services improve.
“We are thinking about providing palliatives to smaller operators in the industry. I mean those with about 7.5 percent share of the market.
“We are in discussion with them in order to see how we can help them to provide data services in different part of the country even as we are talking with bigger operators to ensure that we find a way to improve the quality of data services”, he noted.