ALTON urges NCC, others to review suspended Data Floor Price
Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), the umbrella body of telecommunications’ operators, has urged the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to urgently revisit the suspended data floor price in order to save them from distress.
Data Floor Plan Price is a partial price control measure, which is the lower limit price to check unhealthy but foster healthy competition among players.
Engr. Gbenga Adebayo, chairman Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) stated this position at breakfast meeting organized recently by the Nigeria Information Technology Reporters’ Association (NITRA), in Lagos.
Adebayo explained that floor price is a partial price control measure, which is the lower limit price to check unhealthy but foster healthy competition among players.
“The price floor is a means of controlling anti-competitive behaviours by operators considered to have attained the dominant status in the industry. Earlier, there was a limit to how low ISPs could charge for data services, the regulator in October 2015, approved the removal of data floor price, giving internet service providers opportunity to drop their data prices as low as they can in order to survive.”
He said,“Before then, NCC had set the data floor price limit as a way of ensuring smaller ISPs and ‘upcoming’ telcos had the chance to compete with the bigger, already established ones. The ISPs could compete for customers with low prices. This has now come to hurt the industry very badly, as the smaller operators are finding difficult in a recessed economy to survive due to the ‘heavy weight’ of the bigger players who are able to cross-subsidize the array of services they offer.”
He said available statistics has shown that bigger players lost some market share when the floor price was set and smaller operators got some space in the market place.
He lamented that the Internet service providers have been badly hurt by none determination of a floor price, as they are left to compete at prices below their costs.
He also denounced the challenge operators are facing in purchasing foreign exchange to fulfil their contractual obligations to equipment suppliers and foreign vendors.
According to him,“This situation is adversely impacting our network operations and also some recent developments in the industry have alluded very clearly to the risks at hand. The prevailing scarcity of FX has occasioned a situation where the Banks are unable to obtain FX for an upward period of six months.”
