Update: How Senate stopped increase in data prices from December 1

The Nigerian Senate has halted the planned hike in the price of data, which was to start from December 1, 2016.

Deputy Senate Leader, Senator Ibn N’Allah, during Tuesday’s plenary session, raised a motion on the directive by the Nigeria Communications Commission, NCC, requesting telecoms operators to increase data tariffs.

Senators present at the plenary unanimously condemned the planned increase of data tariffs by the service providers in tandem with NCC and called for it to be halted.

The Senate Committee on Communications was mandated to carry out a thorough oversight on the process to ensure that Nigerians are carried along in the matter. This is to ensure the citizens are not shortchanged.

Last month, the NCC directed the service providers to increase data subscription by almost 100 per cent from tomorrow.

This may make a data plan of N1,000 for 1.5 gigabytes to cost N3,000 at N1,000 per 500 megabytes.