Apex telecom body to start regulating BBM, Facebook, WhatsApp, others

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February 16, 2016 9:38 AM

The NCC, in a 23-page document titled: ‘An Overview of Provision of Over-The-Top (OTT) Services’ stated that the growing influence of these social media platforms posed an obvious threat to the operation of traditional telephone networks.

Prof. Umar Garba Danbatta, NCC CEO/EVC

Media reports reveal that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) announced on Tuesday that it will soon start regulating the activities of Over-The-Top (OTT) players in the Nigerian telecommunications market.

OTT players are platforms like Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, Viber, BlackberryMessenger (BBM) and WeChat, and so on, that deliver audio, video, and other media over the Internet without a multiple-system operator in control of distribution of the content.

READ: Regulator says number of Internet users in Nigeria reduced in December

The NCC further explained that OTT platforms are services based on the Voice over IP communication protocol (VoIP), a technology that is rapidly gaining ground against traditional telephone network technologies, adding that with the increase in uptake of mobile VoIP services provided by apps such as Google, Facebook, Skype, Viber and WhatsApp, telecom operators “face the risk of eroding revenues and profitability.”

This comes just a few days after Spectranet CEO, DavidVenn, had stated that Nigerians would stop using traditional telecom services to make calls, instead opting to used data-based VoIP services to make calls and text, by 2019.

It is unclear what this means exactly for the OTT platforms, in relation to telcos, but Pulse Tech will keep you updated as the situation unfolds.

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