The Federal Government will soon order telecom companies in the country to
effect a nationwide switch-off of over 12.6 million counterfeit phones from
networks by using the International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI)
number.
This was disclosed by Dr. Joseph Odumodu, Director General Standards
Organisation of Nigeria (SON).
Speaking during an interactive forum with Phone Brand Owners in Lagos, the
SON boss pointed out that in 2013 alone, over N5 billion was spent in Nigeria
on the importation of substandard mobile phones, adding that as at April
this year, Nigeria currently has a GSM subscriber base of 126,958,904; and
10 percent of these subscribers (12.6 million) use counterfeit phones.
He affirmed that the enforcement will boost consumer rights protection,
increased revenue for the government via taxes; increase revenue for the
genuine mobile phone manufacturers as well as improved GSM networks in
the country.
According to him, SON is working out the plan with Nigerian Communications
Commission, NCC, and Consumer Protection Council; the phone operators,
and “Soon government shall announce the directive to switch the fake
phones off the networks.”
“As more countries switch-off counterfeit phones, the people behind this
scourge will keep moving to countries that are yet to adopt this solution,
hence the urgent need to address the situation,” he said. He enjoined all
brand owners to monitor and protect their products from the factories
(manufacturers) until they get to the end-users. “Brand owners have to
inscribe coded identification marks on original phones to ensure traceability
and proper user’s guide,” he said.
Umego Adaora, CPC Scientific Officer Lagos Zonal Office, also urged the
brand owners to look beyond making money by considering the negative
effects substandard phones have on the economy, the environment and the
consumer.
Some of the brand owners reacted to the development:
Comfort Ebere, whose company is Nokia mobile sole representative in Nigeria,
noted, ‘There is a phone I saw recently; Nokia as a brand name and they
wrote L300 but Nokia doesn’t produce L300. I also saw Nokia L800 and I
asked where are these phones coming from? I was taken a backed and I
went to the office and spoke with my people to know what is really
happening in the markets. When we see a real Nokia phones from us we
know. If we key in the code and it doesn’t bring up the features we tell the
customer, this is not from us.”
Sunday Mbiam, who represented LG Electronics, said, “I must confess that
it has been very frustrating. You have good phones in the market but
getting complaints from consumer that most of the products they found in
the markets are faked. They must have bought it from roadsides and not
from the main dealers. We have a good warranty in places such that in case
of defaults take your phone to any of our centre for replacement. And we
want to encourage Nigerians to patronise our dealers and not road-side
phone vendors.”
Adetola Oni, representative of Samsung, “We feel very bad about how things
have been going in the markets; our phones are being cloned. A customer
recently reported default but when we tested it in our office it came up as
SAGEM and it was very devastating. We are doing our best to curtail the
problem but we need government and its agencies to help us.”
“People out there are really passing-off brands. There is now how we can
overcome it on our own without the support of the SON and other agencies
to make sure the problem actually come to an end,” added Eze Ifeanyi,
Todal Mobile.
“We have been losing money paying staff salaries and paying a lot of dues
to the government and the market association but not making headway. I
so much appreciate this forum and I believe it will put things in check so that
Nigerian consumers can have value for their money,” said Prince Cletus, the
brand owner of Cletus phones and accessories.

How will this be possible with the way android user change their imei at will

how are they going to do that

it won't be easy but Why can't the focus on helping us reduce the cost if data, no one is complain ing about phone quality to then Even the so called operators sell fake phones

Space booked

lexrichy: Space booked

what space ?