By Chris Alu
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday clamped down Steam Communications, Netcom, SwiftTalk and Multi-dimesnion Technologies for use of 5.4 GHz frequency band illegally.
The operators were discovered during a four-day enforcement exercise by the compliance and enforcement team led by the Assistant Director at the Commission, Mr Salisu Abdu in Lagos.
Addressing media, Abdu said the operations of the telecom firms were an offence under Section 122 of the Nigerian Communication Act 2003, which criminalises any operation without proper licensing by the NCC.
He explained that in 2009, NCC came up with a guideline on the deployment of service on the 5.4GHz band that no operator should operate on it without obtaining necessary licences from the NCC.
He said: “In the course of the guideline, we have monitored compliance and we have discovered that we still had some operators operating illegally on the 5.4GHz till 2012. We have done a lot of clean-up and we thought the frequency was free of interferences.
Adding that, we visited Steam Communications Company and we found there were operating on the 5.4GHz band and as result, we confiscated their radio equipment and they are currently under investigation.”
According to him, the enforcement team also discovered Netcom, Multi-dimension and SwiftTalk collocating their equipment on a telecom mast belonging to a licensed inter- connect clearing operator.
He warned licensees in the telecoms sector to always comply with their licensing conditions, stressing that indulging in illegal operations is capable of creating unnecessary interferences in telecoms services delivery which ultimately affect telecoms consumers.
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