Telecom operators have accused the perceived big deposit money banks (DMBs) who owe a huge percentage of the N120 billion debts arising from the use of Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) of being unresponsive.
UUSD is a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol that is used to send text messages. USSD is similar to Short Message Service (SMS); it uses codes made up of the characters that are available on a mobile phone.
Chairman of ALTON, Gbenga Adebayo, in a telephone interview, said the smaller operators have been responsive and alive to their corporate responsibilities by paying their debts to the operators, adding that the same story could not be told of the big banks that have refused to defray their debts.
According to him, the impact of the debt burden is huge because of the calibre of banks owing and the sums involved.
Adebayo said the CBN governor’s intervention has not resulted in the payment of the debt, meaning such an intervention remained useless at best, adding that the process of final disconnection has started.
He said: “We are now commencing the implementation of the terms of the agreement by sending them notice which will expire after the notice depending on the agreement and once the service notice expires, we will begin to withdraw the service. I must say that some banks are paying. Unfortunately, the ones that are not paying are the big debtor banks. I don’t want to mention their names. They are the big ones and that is why it has such a huge impact on the industry. So the smaller ones that are not owing much are paying; some were paying before, we don’t know what happened and they stopped paying, allowing the debts to pile up.”
