The Executive Vice Chair-man of the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, Engr. Ernest Ndukwe, has told telecommunications service providers they must do All that is necessary to ensure improved and uninterrupted service delivery, “even if it means importing experienced personnel from any part of the world”.

Ndukwe, who gave the charge while inaugurating a 15-member Nigerian Traffic and Operations Meeting (TOM) Group in Abuja yesterday, lamented that while poaching of Nigerian egg-heads and the high turnover of Staff were a Major problem to the Industry , it behoves the Local operators to, if necessary, get the required manpower from outside the country.

He regretted that once Nigerians were trained, Companies from United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, among others, poach them through the offer of mouth-watering incentives.

“One of the issues negatively affecting the efficient delivery of optimum level of performance by service providers is the shortage of experienced manpower in the operating Companies and the high turnover of the few experienced Engineering personnel,” Ndukwe said.

He also told operators in the country to ensure that if they have cause to disrupt Services , they should put in place voice prompts to inform subscribers accurately to save them the trouble of dialling incessantly, noting that some of such Information is usually inaccurate.

“It is directly related to the reliability of network components and service restoration time, after a fault occurs. Due to the complexity of the mobile Networks , the reliability of network components and how quickly they Are revamped, after a fault has occurred, is considered very crucial,” he said.

The Major concern of the Commission is to ensure that the telecommunications consumers Are actually getting \"good Value for their money\" from the various Services being offered, he admonished.

This, he said, calls for commitment from All Industry players, including the Commission, to join hands together in ensuring that service quality is maintained in All circumstances even when faced with intense competition.

According to him, the Commission\'s intention is to fast-track the deployment of broadband in Nigeria in order to contribute greatly in making the \"office on the move\" Concept a reality in Nigeria .

He added that this therefore calls for urgent optimisation of available network Resources . So far, he stated, the Equipment with Data communications capability already deployed across Networks includes GPRS 1 x EV - DO / 1 x EV - DV and 3G.

The NCC Chief charged the Tom Group to come up within one month with recommendations that will help eliminate All of the bottlenecks militating against efficient service delivery.

The initial scope of their activities, according to him, will include:

•To develop best practices aimed at improving reliability of the different communications Networks generally. This includes reviewing any existing practices in terms of their effectiveness and refining or modifying them as the Group deems fit.

•To select a set of performance-based standards from the NCC benchmarks standards for comparison of QoS performance trends of the Major operators.

“This performance-based Standard will be so crafted as to penalise poor performance in a manner that makes network operators and consumers aware of the cost to them of degraded quality,” he stated. “To identify Major causes of non-completion of calls besides failure of the National Power Supply and proffer solutions. This task will include developing optimal ways to reduce non-completion rates and working Out a strategy of effectively deploying Intera-ctive Voice Response (IVR)/VoiceMail and Infor-mative recorded announcements to minimize ineffective calls. To identify, through statistical analysis, service interruptions resulting from transmission failures, the Major causes and proffer optimal solutions.”

He pointed Out that the Foremost responsibility of the Group will be to provide recommendations to the Commission and the communications Industry towards achieving:

•Optimal reliability and interoperability of the Nigerian Commu-nications Networks : mobile, fixed, fixed wireless and Data Networks .

•Security and sustainability of the Nigerian communications Networks , the availability of adequate infrastructure capacity during events and periods of exceptional stress resulting from National disaster.