The Office of National Security Adviser (ONSA) and Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) are deploying mobile device monitoring systems to combat crime in Nigeria.
Professor Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman/Chief Executive, NCC says the government agencies will deploy the Mobile Device Management System (MDMS) capable of monitoring mobile phone and other devices connecting the all telecoms networks nationwide.
“Nigeria is home to a growing connected community of 173,641,060 telephony subscriptions and 119,506,430 Internet connections by April this year.”
-NCC
The proposed MDMS will help combat proliferation of counterfeit, substandard and cloned mobile communication devices in the Nigerian telecoms market “through proper monitoring of our borders and the market”, the telecoms regulator says.
Nigeria is home to a growing connected community of 173,641,060 telephony subscriptions and 119,506,430 Internet connections by April this year, NCC data shows.
Under plans to beef up security in the country, the government agencies will use the MDMS to have control and visibility into devices connecting into the Nigerian telecoms ecosystem ranging from smartphones, tablets, laptops, among others.
Danbatta says the MDMS will be a public-private partnership project to be jointly implemented by a number of government agencies including ONSA and NCC.
Danbatta, represented by Venny Eze-Nwabufoh, Controller at NCC’s Port Harcourt Zonal Office, dropped the hint at a sensitisation forum on “Hazardous Effects of Non-Type Approved Handsets/Equipment on Quality of Service and E-Waste” organised by the agency in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State.
He says that ONSA and other key government agencies have set up two joint committees – Project Steering Committee (PSC) and the Project Delivery Team (PDT)- that have been mandated to “combat the recurrent cycle of fraudster deploying their trade via fake and substandard mobile devices.”
Ahead of the go-live of Nigeria’s MDMS, the telecoms regulatory chief warns vendors of communication equipment and devices to ensure that the devices sold to the public are type-approved by the NCC.
Type approval is “an administrative procedure of technical tests and vetting applied to items of telecoms equipment before they can be sold, connected to the public network or used for the purpose of communication”, Danbatta says.
Use of non-type approved handsets and other devices affects telecoms service quality the NCC chief says explaining that the telecoms regulator conducts type-approval tests on communication equipment and issues certificates based on the technical specifications and standards prescribed by the agency.
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