Abolaji Adebayo 
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has mandated telecom licensees in Nigeria to notify consumers of major service outages through media channels.
Operators must clearly state the cause of the service interruption, the affected areas, and the estimated time for restoration.
This directive follows a report that telecom operators in the country recorded 160 service outages between January and May 2025.
The outages, according to data from Uptime — the NCC’s major outage reporting portal — were largely due to a surge in vandalism, fibre-optic cable cuts, and persistent power shortages.
The report revealed that all four major operators — MTN, Airtel, Globacom, and 9mobile — experienced service disruptions during the five-month period. 9mobile recorded the highest number with 63 outages, followed by Globacom with 49, MTN with 31, and Airtel with 17.
The widespread disruptions affected millions of subscribers across various states, leading to degraded service quality, dropped calls, and internet outages. According to the Uptime portal, the causes of the outages included fibre cuts resulting from road construction, vandalism of telecom infrastructure, power failures, and theft.
The NCC emphasized that consumers must also be informed at least one week in advance of any planned service outages. This requirement is contained in the Commission’s new directive titled “Directive on Reportage of Major Network Outages by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).”
The directive is part of the Commission’s efforts to ensure timely resolution of outages, improve service quality, and enhance transparency in the telecom industry. It mandates that Mobile Network Operators, Internet Service Providers, and other last-mile service providers must also offer proportional compensation — such as validity extension — for outages lasting more than 24 hours, in accordance with the Consumer Code of Practice Regulations.
The NCC classified major outages into three categories: any operational condition such as fibre cuts due to construction, vandalism, or force majeure affecting five percent or more of the operator’s subscriber base or at least five local government areas; unplanned outages or isolation of network resources at 100 or more sites or five percent of total sites (whichever is less) lasting 30 minutes or more; and any outage that degrades network quality in the top 10 states by traffic volume.
Operators are now required to report all major outages via the Commission’s Major Outage Reporting Portal, which is accessible to the public at www.ncc.gov.ng. The portal also discloses the identity of parties responsible for service disruptions.
Commenting on the initiative, the Director of Technical Standards and Network Integrity at the NCC, Engr. Edoyemi Ogor, noted that the Commission had tested the reporting system with operators before making it official.
“By providing consumers and stakeholders with timely and transparent information on network outages, we are entrenching a culture of accountability and transparency. This ensures that culprits responsible for infrastructure sabotage are identified and held accountable,” Ogor stated.
He added that the directive aligns with the federal government’s Executive Order, which designates telecom infrastructure as Critical National Information Infrastructure (CNII).
“This reinforces the need to protect telecom assets due to their importance to national security, economic stability, and everyday life in Nigeria,” he said.
