The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) revealed that telecoms operators loss over 6,000 generating sets to miscreants in a year.
The Director, Technical Standards and Networking Integrty at NCC, Dr. Ibrahim Sanni, gave the revelation at the 54th edition of the NCC organised monthly consumer parliament, which held on Thursday in Ikorodu, Lagos State.
He said “the miscreants most times come under the cover of darkness to various Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) to perpetuate crimes.”
He pointed out that such activities were impacting negatively on service quality, since the operators use the generating sets to power each BTS.
Telecoms operators who do not rely on Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) for electric power to run their BTS, fully relied on their generating sets, and each BTS has two generating sets, with one as standby. “Based on the arrangement, telecoms operators usually have challenges of poor service quality as a result of the activities of the miscreants, which lead to service disruptions and downtime on various networks,” Sanni said.
He however cautioned that the NCC is working together with the Ministry of Communications Technology and have presented a bill to the National Assembly to consider telecoms facilities as critical national infrastructure. The bill when passed into law will make it a criminal offence for anyone to destroy, or steal telecoms facilities.
Other crimes committed by miscreants include theft of diesel, theft of batteries, destruction of equipment at telecoms site, fibre cable cuts, and sometimes killing of security guards who put up some forms of resistance. Dr. Sanni said that these activities are only creating setback to the Nigerian economy.
He therefore called upon Nigerians to guard against telecoms facilities and report any case of vandalism on telecoms facilities to security agents.