The Executive Commissioner of the Nigerian Communications Commission, Mr. Sunday Dare during an interactive session with journalists in Abuja on Thursday said an investigation carried out by the commission showed that Mobile operators were illegally deducting billions of naira from their subscribers’ account.
Dare, who represented Executive Vice Chairman, Prof Umar Danbatta, said an on-going investigation covering a period of two years between 2016 and 2018 had found that mobile operators illegally deducted billions of naira from the accounts of their subscribers.
Also at the 86th Telecommunications Consumers Parliament in Abuja on Thursday, Danbatta said that the global telecommunications industry lost $60bn yearly to call masking.
Some of the illegal deductions happened through forced subscriptions to Value Added Services that subscribers did not willingly opt for.
He said, “The NCC carried out an investigation between 2016 and 2018 which revealed that telecoms consumers have been deducted billions of naira through forceful subscriptions, illegal and unauthorised deductions by Mobile Network Operators and Value Added Service Providers.”
Dare said that the full report would be ready for release in January and added that the operators would be forced to return the monies to the subscribers.