The Do Not Disturb Service for all top Telecoms in Nigeria
Tired of receiving incessant and unwanted marketing messages in your phone? You can now easily activate the Do Not Disturb (DND) service on your mobile line.
The Do Not Disturb Service in a Brief
Contrary to what you may think, the Do Not Disturb service is not a new service. The service was initiated by the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC) in May 2016 as a result of complaints by mobile subscribers about incessant marketing messages. However, the implementation of the DND code started on July 1, 2016.
MTN was the first telecom to respond to the DND directive but other telecoms in Nigeria followed shortly after. Today, you can activate Do Not Disturb in any of the four telecoms in Nigeria. You can even activate the DND service in ntel, Spectranet, and Smile.
Hitherto, NCC did not attach any penalty to violating the Do Not Disturb directive, however, as from April 2018 defaulters will be fined N500,000. This pronouncement was made during the 83rd edition of the Telecom Consumer Parliament that held on April 8, 2018.
Activating the Do Not Disturb Service
It is easy to activate the DND service. You just need to SMS “STOP” to 2442. This works irrespective of the mobile network in use.
You can equally choose which promotional message to allow and which to stop. The DND service covers the following 11 categories of promotional messages:
- Banking/Financial Products/Insurance,
- Real Estate,
- Education,
- Health,
- Consumer goods/Automobiles,
- Communications/Broadcasting/Entertainment/IT,
- Tourism/Leisure,
- Sports,
- Religion,
- Information on New Products/ Services, and
- News Alert.
You can deactivate promotional messages from any of these categories by texting the corresponding number to 2442. For instance to opt out of marketing messages on “Real Estate”, text “2” to 2442.
You can also opt into the promotional messages by texting “ALLOW” to 2442 and you can view your DND status by texting “STATUS” to 2442.
Downsides of the Do Not Disturb Service
To the subscribers, the Do Not Disturb service is a win-win solution, however, this is not true for telecoms and providers of Value Added Services. DND could result in a reduction in revenue for service providers. It could hamper advertisement through SMS and minimize the reach of telecoms and other firms.
This could be the reason why telecoms in Nigeria do not widely publicize the Do Not Disturb service. Even with the poor promulgation of the service, up to 10 million subscribers had already opted for the service as of December 2017.
Follow us