The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has called on telecom consumers in the country to always visit its website whenever they want to buy any telecom product in order to ascertain if the product they want to purchase is type-approved by the Commission.
Engr. Bako Wakil, NCC Director, Technical Standards and Network Integrity who stated this in a video chat, noted that the appeal is to ensure that the proliferation of sub-standard and fake devices is not allowed in the industry.
“I appeal to people to please crosscheck with the NCC website when they want to buy anything particularly mobile phones, whether we have real type-approved the model they want to buy. This is to ensure that the proliferation of sub-standard and fake devices is not actually allowed in the industry,” he said.
Wakil stated that if telecom devices are not produced according to the standards, they might actually bring some challenges to the users themselves, noting that they might probably radiate more than they ought to.
“Another thing is that they also introduce noise and interference into the network. Sometimes you will be complaining that the network is bad; it might be that you are using a sub-standard handset, it may not be a genuine one and therefore, contributing to the bad service experienced by users.
According to the NCC Director, “So what we normally do is to appeal to people to look at the NCC website. We have a list of all the model numbers of all the type-approved devices.
“Whether they are mobile handsets, tablets, laptops, personal computers, switches and any devices that may be connected to the national network, they ought to have been type-approved by the Commission and in that way ensure that they are produced according to the standard they were meant to operate.”
He said that what usually happens is that because of the porous nature of Nigeria, a lot of sub-standard and fake products come into the country adding that because they seem to be cheaper, people go for the cheap attraction.
“However, they actually introduce a lot of injuries and challenges into the communication network,” he said.