Deactivated lines: Court summons telcos

All major telecommunications service providers in the country will have their time in the dock on September 17 as a Federal High Court in Lagos has ordered them to appear before it to explain why they deactivated some of their customers’ lines without their consents.

The telecommunications firm had deactivated some lines based on the directive 0f the National Communications Commission (NCC) which reportedly gave them a seven-day ultimatum starting from August 4, 2015, to deactivate unregistered lines with invalidity status.

The directive was said to have been based on the outcome of a meeting among the intelligence services and the NCC which analysed the security threats posed by unregistered Subscriber Identification Modules (SIM).

But some subscribers whose lines were deactivated said the action has affected them negatively despite the fact that they pose no security threat and therefore headed to court to contest it.

One of the nine applicants in the suit, a Lagos-based lawyer, Olayinka Oyeniyi, said they instituted the action on behalf of themselves and all other subscribers in the country who suffered inconveniences because of the deactivation of their lines.

But the court presided over by Justice Mohammed Yunusa on Wednesday declined to granting an ex parte application seeking the immediate reactivation of all the deactivated mobile lines.

It, however, instead ordered the telecommunication companies to appear before it on appear Semptember17 to defend themselves.

The major claim of the applicants was that their rights to dignity of human person had been injured as a result the automated voice message they received saying they had been barred for incomplete registration despite the fact that they were duly registered with their complete biodata few years ago when they purchased their SIMs.

They also complained that despite the said deactivation, the telecommunication companies have not given out their particulars to marketing companies which usually send them uncountable unsolicited messages of which the telecommunication companies made profit without respecting their rights to privacy.

They therefore prayed the court to order the telecommunications companies to immediately reconnect and restore their lines.

They also sought an interim injunction restraining the telecommunication companies from further barring their lines pending the determination of their suit as well as prohibiting them from broadcasting unsolicited SMS and short codes to their mobile phones.

But Justice Yunusa maintained that it would be in the interest of justice to give the telecoms companies the opportunity to defend themselves first and therefore adjourned the case till September 17 .

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