Many old adages have mentioned that the customer is the king of the business.
It has also been agreed time and time again that the customer is the object, subject and the reason for every business.
This may be true in other sectors but not so in the telecommunications industry where the customer is meted with half measures and is asked not to complain.
Reasons operators give are sometimes hazy including lack of infrastructure, power and activities of militants in the Niger Delta region.
But the truth is that operators’ lack effective communication and have refused to acknowledge that.
The operators are guilty as charged for over-promising the customer and under-delivering the promises.
Even in the face of worsening services, operators of Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) kicked against decision asking them to show concern over poor quality of services.
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), declared 2017, "Year of Telecom Consumer" with a campaign programme designed to give concrete expression to the centrality of the consumer in the telecom ecosystem.
It is doubtful, if the campaign achieved its purpose because the Quality of Service (QoS) provisioning has continued to deteriorated beyond what is permissible particularly the drop call rate.
Also, the Consumer Code of Practice for users of telecoms services which requires operators to submit for approval, a code which must stipulate the rights of the consumers, procedures for resolving disagreements with the consumers, and service level agreements with their consumers has achieved little.
Since all these interventions have little or no impact, consumers should take the bull by the horn by suing operators for poor services.
