The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says it will embark on consultations for National Mobile Roaming license in Nigeria, urging for inputs from stakeholders.

This information is contained in NCC latest quarterly magazine made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.

NCC said that the decision to embark in the consultations for the license was contained in a consultation paper on National Mobile Roaming to announce its intention and procedure for the consultative forum.

According to the commission, the National Mobile Roaming is the ability of a cellular customer to automatically make and receive voice calls, send and receive data or access other services.

It said this include data services when travelling outside the coverage area of the home network via a visited network.

“Such arrangements effectively multiply a carrier’s ability to cover those areas where they do not have the presence of their own network without actually having to deploy infrastructure.”

It said that prior agreement between operators enabled the subscriber to roam into another network in case the home network was not available.

“It is believed to be simpler and less costly to manage than active infrastructure sharing and may also ensure effective competition through a greater degree of uniformity among operators ‘retail offerings.’

“The consultation for mobile roaming license is tandem with the policy of the NCC to always seek industry stakeholders inputs into a policy document to ensure their buy-in.”

NCC said that it had taken note of experts’ opinions that the implementation of National Mobile Roaming could bring in the following benefits.

“Extra source of revenue for both mobile network operators, less investment costs since infrastructure sharing divides the investment burden among the operators rather than being shouldered by a single operator.

“Promote efficient use of resources, easy market entry, better choice of service, less negative environmental inputs and promote universal service provision.” (NAN)

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