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By Correspondent.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has declared 2026 a decisive year for telecom consumers in Nigeria, pledging marked improvements in service quality, billing transparency and digital consumer protection.
In a New Year message titled “2026: Delivering Better Quality of Experience to the Nigerian Consumer,” the Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the NCC, Dr. Aminu Maida, outlined a consumer-focused roadmap aimed at making telecommunications services more reliable, affordable and fair.
The message, published on the Commission’s official website, stated that the major focus for 2026 is to ensure that Nigerians begin to feel the real-life benefits of recent investments in telecom infrastructure.
According to the NCC, consumers should expect clearer voice calls, more consistent data speeds and improved overall network performance, promisong greater service reliability through a reduction in avoidable network disruptions and faster restoration times whenever outages occur.
On pricing, the NCC said it would work towards simpler and more transparent tariff structures and data bundles, while also ensuring financial fairness through automatic and prompt reversals for failed airtime or data recharges.
“Our shared expectation is simple: better services that people can feel, delivered by a market that is fair, competitive and sustainable,” Dr. Maida said, adding that the goals align with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s vision of building a $1 trillion digital economy by 2030.
To deliver on these commitments, the Commission said it would intensify monitoring of network black spots and high-traffic areas prone to service drops.
The commission said it also plans to strengthen market discipline by operationalising a revised Corporate Governance Code, holding operators more accountable for service quality and billing accuracy.
In response to rising digital risks, the NCC said it is strengthening the Internet Code of Practice to better protect consumers from fraud, cyberbullying and harmful online content.
NCC noted that the 2026 agenda builds on significant gains recorded in 2025 recalling out that by the end of last year, broadband penetration had reached 50.58 per cent, with over 109.6 million broadband subscriptions nationwide.
Adding to its success story last year, the NCC management expressed delight that,4G technology overtook 2G as the dominant connection type, accounting for 52 per cent of total connections.
To sustain this momentum, the NCC said it is advancing “Project BRIDGE,” a large-scale infrastructure initiative designed to deploy 90,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cables across the country.
The Commission also issued a strong message to telecom operators, urging them to invest more deliberately in network resilience.
Operators, it said, are now expected to communicate more transparently during service downtime, provide realistic restoration timelines and treat customer complaints as critical feedback rather than routine administrative issues.
To address external challenges affecting service delivery, the NCC disclosed that it is working with the Nigeria Governors’ Forum to resolve Right-of-Way issues and collaborating with security agencies, including the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), to protect telecom infrastructure from vandalism.
The Commission reaffirmed that its overriding priority is to ensure that every Nigerian can use telecommunications services with confidence and receive full value for every kobo spent.
Edited by Dada Ahmed.
