The Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) has blamed the network disruption being experienced by Nigerians on the #EndSARS Protest across the country, explaining that the network issues leading to the present poor voice and data services is not intentional.
In a statement titled ‘State Of The Nation And Telecoms Operations’ the umbrella body of all licensed telecom operators in Nigeria said it was compelled to issue, ALTON explained the outage being experienced on their networks in the last few days is as a result of a compounded power and other operations-related issues. This has resulted in congestion of networks and impact on quality of services..
It added that further movement restrictions and the volatility on the streets owing to the #EndSARS Protest has compounded the restoration of outages because engineers have not been able to move about to fix the problems.
“ALTON regrets the reports of recent incidents of violence across the country. The wanton destruction of lives and properties is disheartening. As service providers and employers of labour our immediate priority is the safety of our staff across the country.
The statement promised that at the moment, affected member operators are exploiting all avenues to remedy the situation. “Engineers are making relentless effort round the clock to resolve issues, while in the interim, efforts are being made to optimize coverage utilising alternative solutions as a stop-gap solution to the most impacted locations,” it assured.
While appealing to subscribers to please bear with the operators, ALTON argued that Nigerians need both voice and data communication especially at this critical time.
“We therefore appeal to our brothers and sisters who are still at the barricades, to please grant access to our member operator engineers to be able to access the affected locations to restore telecom services,” it said.