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Mobile phone users in the country will begin to pay a mandatory monthly fee of 40 kobo as the two of the nation’s biggest players, MTN and Zain Nigeria, have connected their estimated 42 million subscribers to Central Equipment Identity Registry (CEIR) service provider, Netvisa GSM Secured Limited. The two operators have entered into an interconnectivity agreement under which each of their subscriber line will be billed a mandatory monthly fee of 40 kobo following the go-live of Netvisa service designed to offer a centralised database of stolen phones for blacklisting handsets in the event of theft.
Under the commercial pact brokered by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) between Netvisa and operators, mobile operators will directly remit the monthly fee to the CEIR operator and deduct same from their annual numbering fees paid into government coffers through NCC. 
The arrangement was proposed by NCC to assuage protests by operators that they can offer the free of charge to subscribers by implementing a CEIR among themselves rather than license a third party to offer the same service at cost to phone users in the country. 
Under the two-year commercial interconnect arrangement brokered and mandated by NCC, operators will pay Netvisa directly each month and defray the cost from the annual numbering fees they pay the telecoms regulator. 
At the expiration of the two-year commercial agreement, it is then expected that the monthly payment for blacklisting will now be deducted from the airtime of every subscriber monthly and remitted to Netvisa, which has come under criticism since it was issued a sole licence by NCC to offer the service.
Based on official statistics obtained by Technology Times, active mobile subscriber base on GSM and CDMA mobile networks in the country reached 66,418,011 lines at Q2, 2009, a development that will see Netvisa raking in some N26.5 million and N3.2 billion in monthly and annual earnings from subscribers when all other mobile operators join MTN and Zain in interconnecting the CEIR network.
“That is money earned from doing absolutely nothing”, an executive of a telecoms company who is conversant with the development told Technology Times on condition of anonymity at the weekend while also citing that operators have come under pressure to connect the controversy-ridden CEIR service provider, Netvisa.
According to the source, whether NCC has chosen to foot the bill for the service in the interim for the next two years of not, “the salient issue remains that a company is earning money, in this case tax payers’ money, for offering no service and doing nothing.”
The emergence of Netvisa has been flayed by operators and other stakeholders who say that the option of payment being implemented in Nigeria for the blacklisting service will only put more burden on phone users in the country.
Both NCC and Netvisa told Technology Times that they plan to respond this week to media enquiry raised over the criticism that has greeted the go-live of the scheme.
With the signing of the interconnectivity pact with MTN Nigeria and Zain Nigeria, Netvisa has been given some 42 million out of the community of 66 million active mobile subscribers in the Nigerian telecoms market at Q2, 2009, a figure representing the crème of the market’s estimated 68 million active subscribers during the same period.
NCC had pegged the rate of 40 kobo per subscriber for the phone blocking service after Netvisa’s proposal for a higher price was resisted by operators that also expressed dissatisfaction with the selection process that saw the emergence of Netvisa as the preferred candidate to provide the single database of blacklisted phones in the country.