Data Depletion, a situation that occurs when a subscriber exhausts his or her data bundle before the expiration date or when more than the volume is utilised for accessing online content, greater than what the subscriber believes it should be or what it ought to be, has been a major issue in the telecom industry, as Nigerians have come out to voice out their frustration.
For instance, Adeola Olaitan, an online entrepreneur, laments the exorbitant monthly data expenses she incurs in order to stay connected and not miss out on orders. “I expend a substantial sum on data, but it seems to dissipate within mere hours. It is disheartening because I aspire to interact with my clients and advance my business; however, limited data hinders me, compelling me to exhaust all of my profits on acquiring more,” Olaitan lamented.
A social media coordinator for a prominent real estate firm, Salome Joseph, revealed that their annual expenditure on data alone does not commensurate with their yearly profits. “This is indeed distressing as it has necessitated our organisation to make concerted efforts to minimize our data expenses in order to optimise productivity and enhance responsiveness towards clients,” Joseph averred.
“Upon purchasing a data plan for N2,000 from a provider, which offers approximately 9GB of data, only 5GB can be utilized during the day while the remaining 4GB is reserved for night-time usage. It seems reasonable that after exhausting one’s daytime allowance, access to night-time data should be permitted; however, this is not the case with the network provider as it does not allow such flexibility. This practice exemplifies its tendency towards consumer deception and places them at the bottom of network company rankings,” a POS merchant Ganiu Falilat, stated.
Increasing complaints
Olaitan, Joseph and Falilat are among the thousands of Nigerians who have expressed concerns about the rapid depletion of their data subscriptions, coupled with exorbitant expenses and unexpected drainage, even as they called on the regulator to intervene.
According to the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), data depletion was one of the most prevalent complaints received from telecom consumers in the country, even as it noted that most of the complaints come as a result of the consumers’ migration to 4G/LTE technology.
“It is, therefore, important that we completely appreciate and understand the issues surrounding data depletion, its usage, and consumption in the era of 4G technology before we fully commence 5G usage. As much as the commission has an obligation to the telecom consumer, it also has an obligation to the Industry; a symbiotic relationship in which one party cannot survive without the other.
“The consumers are the basis for the operators’ business; if their interests are ignored, the operators’ investments would collapse, and there would be no industry for the Commission to regulate,” it stated.
Reasons behind data depletion
The director of Technical Standards and Network Integrity, NCC, Engr. Edoyemi Ogoh, has stated that a number of variables, both technical and non-technical, can be attributed to the problem of data depletion that telecom subscribers are experiencing.
Ogoh, who gave the explanation during the 91st Telecoms Consumer Parliament (TCP) organised by the NCC, said technically, even if a user has merely opened a website to read text, most browsers play videos by default.
He mentioned other silent data-draining issues, such as automated app upgrades and smartphone uploads of images and videos to the cloud, while claiming that there are other technical aspects as well, such as the faster internet brought about by the switch to 4G, which automatically plays video in higher quality formats, using more bandwidth.
“Non-technical factors that contribute to data depletion are the growth of social media; online advertisements and default audio-visual activations in web browsers and apps; the use of subpar and fake subscriber devices; the expiration of data bundle usage timelines prior to data bundle exhaustion; and the low purchasing power of subscribers, which leads to the purchase of small bundle sizes with short periods of use and an increased frequency of data depletion complaints,” he stated.
NCC promises QoE in 2024
Meanwhile, the commission has declared that starting January this year, it will closely monitor the quality of services provided by the nation’s four major telecom providers.
NCC’s CEO and executive vice chairman, Dr Aminu Maida revealed this when he held a meeting with Nigerian Information Technology Reporters Association (NITRA) in Lagos recently.
In a collaborative fashion, NCC would sit down with the operators and look at the challenges, Maida assured even as he harped that QoE is his top priority. “In my engagement with the CEOs of telcos, I had to let them know that we need to make sure everyone, irrespective of their location, gets value for their money. There are challenges everywhere, whether it is diesel or security; but because of the criticality of the telecoms infrastructure, we must not fold our hands.”
On the part of the consumers, Maida affirmed that, “We will continue to enlighten our consumers to understand the habits that drive greater data usage, because as we upgrade our phones, we are buying phones with stronger data tolerance which are producing better quality pictures and posting them on our social media platforms, but fail to realize that these habits consume data faster.
“We are also going to be focusing on issues that have been escalated. We are going to be stepping in, as a regulator, to see what are the common issues that consumers are complaining about, what are the regulators doing about them, so that we can really hold everybody in the value chain accountable. We are also going to see how we can improve the general security, integrity from the consumers’ perspective.
“We will be driving QoE, right from the point of how they find and select telecoms services. We will be leveraging on data to be able to empower consumers to be able to make the right choice, so that we can move away from the world where we have multiple sim devices. Rather than multiple devices and SIM Cards, we are looking at a situation, where consumers will only have one SIM card and one devices.”
