This followed the adoption of a motion by Senator Gbenga Ashafa (ACN, Lagos East) and 42 others on the deteriorating services provided by the GSM firms.
Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu, who presided over the session, said, "Subscribers were being short changed by the poor quality services. Our regulatory agencies need to rise up and make the operators comply with the existing regulations."
Senators Chris Ngige (ACN, Anambra South East) and Boluwaji Kunlere (LP, Ondo Central) said the telecom providers were charging monies for services not provided.
"They are ripping off about three-quarters of Nigerians," Ngige said.
Senator Gilbert Nnaji (PDP, Enugu East) regretted that there had been no result since his committee recently queried the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and service providers over the issue.
Senator Smart Adeyemi (PDP, Kogi West) recommended that the service providers be charged on corporate social responsibility, regretting that the indiscriminate installation of masts exposed Nigerians to health hazards.
Senator Femi Lanlehin (ACN, Oyo South) called for tough legislations to ensure workability of telecommunication services.
Opening up the debate earlier, Ashafa said GSM subscribers across the nation were disgruntled over the poor quality of services.
"The complaints include persistent dropped calls and resultant loss to the users billed for calls not utilised. Also, calls between networks are hardly audible and sometimes distorted. Despite this, operators are still flooding the market with promotions of all kinds to boost their revenues while failing to ensure customer satisfaction," he said.
For his part, Sen. Ibrahim Gobir (PDP, Sokoto) attributed the poor services of the GSM companies to the negligence of NCC.
He said 90 per cent of the problem was caused by NCC and he challenged NCC to find out the bandwidth capacity which each service provider could carry and ensure that they adhered to it.
The Senate mandated its Committee on Communications to investigate the effectiveness of the service providers and the NCC to enforce its policy on co-habitation of masts to reduce the radiation emanating from those masts.
There was no immediate comment from the GSM companies or from the NCC.
.
Daily Trust