Renewal of Licenses: The truth According to investigations at the NCC

Deliberate, devious disinformation has been one of the downsides of the explosion of social media in the last few years.

Leading telecommunications company, Globacom, was recently at the receiving end of such outright falsehood on social media.

In a viral story published on some blogs on September 21, it was alleged that the telecommunications company had refused to pay about N200 billion in spectrum license renewal fees, annual operating levies, and numbering plan fees to the Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC.

According to the sources within the NCC, there was no issue of N200 billion debt and there was no attempt to compromise the system. The issuance and payment of frequency license renewal is a regular occurrence in the telecoms industry.

Unknown to the promoters of the campaign of calumny, while they were writing their story, Globacom had made the down payment of N40billion and thereafter paid the balance of 114 billion Naira thus making the total sum of N154billion required for the license renewal and other fees.

An exhaustive investigation by this medium at the NCC revealed that there was no iota of truth in the earlier report. Globacom is not owing NCC and there was no issue of debt. Rather, it was about the renewal of licenses which the company has since paid in full.