As part of its regulatory and revenue generating functions, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has recorded N240 million from licences issued to operators in the Value Added Service (VAS) segment of the telecommunications sector.
New Telegraph reported that the industry regulator had so far issued licences to 24 firms within the period with 10 given out last year and nine issued earlier this year.
NCC further consolidated the process with additional five licences, bringing the total to 24 with each costing approximately N10 million.
The newly licensed firms, according to the Commission’s database, include Terragon Holdings Limited, Bergen Horn Company Limited, Avalon Design Konsult Ltd, Datacom International Services Limited, and Rabash Enterprises Limited
The need to guard against rising anticompetitive practices and other unfair sharing formula between VAS licensees and the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) had necessitated the move by the NCC to restructure the market with a view to engendering an effective competition that will ensure sanity and foster needed economic growth.
With the aggregators in place, the two-way transactions between the telcos and the VAS providers will now have a third party with the aggregators playing the middlemen between the two sides.
The framework for the creation of the VAS aggregators states that under the new structure, “the network operators will provide final link to the subscriber for the purpose of delivering value added service to the end user.
