Nigeria Communications Commission Issues 10 new VAS Licenses to Foster Innovation in the Sector

As parts of its effort to deepen the market and improve the quality of service rendered in the telco sector, the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has provided license to 10 new Value Added Service (VAS) providers.

The announcement which was made in a document released by the NCC also projected that the market value of VAS would grow to $500 million in 2024 from its current valuation of $200 million.

The newly licensed companies are listed below:

• I-Cell Multimedia Limited.
• Nina-Jojer Limited.
• 21st Century Technologies Limited.
• Nitroswitch Limited
• HML Consulting Limited.
• Iykejordan Limited.
• Cognys Systems Limited.
• Perpetual Communications Limited.
• Mobile Intelligence Limited.
• Aerandir Technologies Nigeria Limited.

The newly-commissioned licenses will increase income generation of both network operators and content developers as well as improve innovation, local content, and employment opportunities.

NCC went on to say that about 24 million registered subscriber records were cleaned up in the course of the year via Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), in fulfilment of the mandate to establish a credible database of telephone subscribers.

To intensify its efforts in making the National Identification Number (NIN) mandatory, NCC is partnering with NIMC to ensure that NIN is required in processes such as sim registration, sim retrieval and sim reactivation.

With the new addition into the VAS sector of the country, an optimised service delivery is to be expected by Nigerians, however, it is not guaranteed that most of the companies will be fully functional for long.

According to a Nairametrics report, out of the 170 service providers that were recorded at one time during the year, only about 120 remain while others have dropped out because of the challenges in the sector.

It is however hoped that the innovation and optimised service that the NCC and Nigerians expect from these VAS providers will be fully delivered over the course of 2020.