The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC has stated that it has uncovered eight million forceful subscriptions to telecoms services.
The full audit carried out on 45 VAS providers that had over 65 per cent forceful subscriptions revealed the information.
The audit exercise of forceful mass activation of telecoms subscribers into various value added services was carried out in December last year. This was after subscribers complained that the Do-Not-Disturb facility introduced by the NCC, had not stopped loss of airtime to Mobile Network Operators for unsolicited services.
“We identified over 8,443,367 illegal mass activations in the last audit exercise and established the fact that these practices of unauthorised mass activations of subscribers were widespread and rampant in the telecoms industry,” NCC said in the report.
Following the investigation, NCC promised to make the indicted organisations to make refunds to affected consumers as appropriate.