The Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of
Nigeria (ALTON) says it will suspend unstructured supplementary service data
(USSD) services over N42 billion debt owed by financial service providers.
This was announced in a statement jointly signed by Gbenga
Adebayo and Gbolahan Awonuga, its chairman and head of operations respectively,
on Thursday.
ALTON said it had a partnership with financial service
providers on bearing the cost of USSD access by end-users but the arrangement
could not continue following the issuance of the USSD pricing determination by
the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
“The banks decided that they would no longer pay for USSD
service delivered to their customers and requested our members to charge
customers directly for use of the USSD channel,” the statement read.
“This billing methodology where the customer is directly
charged USSD access fees by our members irrespective of the service charges
that the bank may subsequently apply to the customers’ bank account is called
‘End-User Billing’ which the banks specifically demanded that all our members
implement.
“The banks, however, provided no assurances to our members
that such service fees charged to customers’ bank accounts for access to bank
services through the USSD channel would be discontinued post implementation of
end-user billing by our members.”
ALTON said it has been eight months since the NCC issued an
updated pricing for USSD which restricted telcos from charging end-users for
the service and mandated banks to negotiate the settlement of outstanding
obligations.
Both parties were also to agree individual pricing
mechanisms to be applied on USSD services.
ALTON claims that telcos continued to provide access to USSD
infrastructure despite the N42 billion debt owed by the banks.
“Unfortunately, as it has been impossible to agree on a
structure for these payments with the banks that do not involve the end-user
being asked to pay,” the association said.
“We deeply regret that we have reached a point where the
withdrawal of these services has become unavoidable.”
ALTON said it would withdraw USSD services in phases
starting with the most significant debtors on Monday, March 15.
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