Leadership

The Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC) says it has acquired "122" from Airtel as its toll-free emergency line for public use.

In a statement on Friday in Abuja, the commission's Deputy Corps Public Education Officer, Bisi Kazeem, said that as a result, the code number is no longer for Airtel Customer Service.

"The attention of the public, especially Airtel mobile telephone subscribers, is hereby drawn to the fact that '122' has been allocated to the FRSC as emergency toll-free number.

MTN, Globacom, Airtel, Etisalat and Visafone are losing about N8 billion daily revenue to the recent bombing of their facilities in the northern parts of the country.

The operators are losing money on their voice, short message service (SMS) and internet data traffic which pass through their network both on the microwave and fibre optic backbones.

The Minister of Communication Technology, Omobola Johnson, has stressed that lawmakers have a critical role to play in the development of the nation's Information Communication Technology (ICT) sector through advancing legislation that will increase the availability of ICT networks services and devices to Nigerians.

Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP-17) in Durban, South Africa, participants at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Symposium on ICTs and Climate Change in Ghana have renewed calls for global leaders to recognise the power of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

The ongoing SIM Card Registration by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) may soon hit a brick wall due to apathy from telephone subscribers in Nigeria. The NCC had budgeted N6.1 billion for the exercise though a source in the Commission told the Leadership newspaper that only N2.1 billion had so far been released to it. The commission launched the programme in Abuja three weeks ago with the intention of registering all SIM card users in the country.

As the Joint Tax board get set to commance the e-registration of tax payers, one state from each geo-political zone would participate in the pilot scheme.

This was disclosed by the JTB Secretary, Alhaji Lawal Abubakar when the committee paid a courtesy call on the emir of Bauchi, Alhaji Rilwanu Sulaiman Adamu at the week-end. The secretary revealed that a state from each geo-political zone of the country would serve as a pilot to the exercise, and said that the states are Bauchi, Jigawa, Kwara, Delta, Abia and Oyo.

One person’s gain is another person’s loss. The lively price war amongst mobile operators in Nigeria has proved good news for consumers but is threatening to put a number of airtime resellers and call centre operators out of business.

Checks by The Leadership’s reporter showed that many of the call centre operators and resellers have found their business has been badly affected, especially when Airtel lowered its tariffs by half allowing its customers to make calls across networks for only 20 kobo per second or N12 naira per minute.