• Wants Unhindered Access Of Personnel To Stem Service Disruptions

By Clifford Agugoesi, Editor-in-Chief

Sequel to the events of the past couple of days in Nigeria triggered off by the #ENDSARS protests and the unfortunate loss of lives, especially in the Lekki toll gate area of Lagos, south west of the country, the Association of Licensed Telecommunications Operators of Nigeria (ALTON),undertook a review of the state of the nation and condemned the needless loss of lives and blamed the service disruptions in the national network on hedging in of its operatives.

Consequently, ALTON came up with some prayers in a 7-paragraph Communique, that when answered, would restore normalcy in the political-economy landscape of the country, a statement signed by the Management of the organization, reveals.

ALTON regretted the reports of recent incidents of violence across the country, saying the wanton destruction of lives and properties was disheartening, while emphasizing that as service providers and employers of labour its immediate priority was the safety of its staff across the country.

ALTON acknowledged that some of its member operators experienced outages on their networks on the evening of Tuesday, October 22 which still subsisted , but stated none of this was intentional.

The Communique reads partly: “The outages have been compounded by power and other operations-related issues that have occurred across some major routes in Lagos metropolis and other states resulting in congestion of networks and impact on quality of services.

Further movement restrictions and the volatility on the streets has compounded the restoration of outages because engineers have not been able to move about to fix the problems.

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.

We appeal to subscribers to please bear with us and be patient. Let us remember that we 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.”

ALTON prays for comfort, peace and strength for all.