Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has threatened that its members may shut down services in seven states over closure of their Base Transceiver Stations (BTS).
ALTON Chairman, Engr. Gbenga Adebayo said this while addressing a press conference on the state of the industry on Thursday. He said Ogun, Ondo, Akwa Ibom, Ebonyi, Osun and Kaduna states were treating the telecoms industry as an extractive sector by imposing myriads of taxes on operators and closing down the BTS sites arbitrarily.
The ALTON’s chairman said many sites in the listed states have been shut down or about to be shut by agents of Government not minding the security and economic implications on their states.
According to him, the association has resolved that its members will not reopen any sites closed by state or local government authority.
He said arbitrary sites closure without following the Nigeria Communications Commission, (NCC) guidelines and best practices will no longer be tolerated.
He noted that ALTON’s members continued to record cases of sites closures in many states in an attempt to force service providers to pay local taxes and levies.
He said some of these levies and taxes are multiple in nature because most of them are only aimed at the telecoms operators
He said: “We are considering very carefully the situation of site closure and harassment of our members in some of those states and we may begin anytime soon to have them feel the impact of their actions on telecom operators if they do not desist from deliberate disruption of our operations.”
He appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to place a presidential declaration on “telecom Infrastructure as Critical National Security and Economic Infrastructure” as provided by the cybercrime law of 2015.
