But before the introduction of GSM and telecommunications operations in Nigeria, there used to be a company called NITEL. They had phone booths across major areas in Nigeria and made use of a card slotted into the machine. It used what is known as a unit for call time. Children born in the late 90s won't relate to this. But that's not my focus for today's article.
Call time, also known as voucher, had a short and strict validity period. Recharge cards were of values of ₦1500, then ₦700 and then ₦400. Plus a monthly ₦4000 Booster card. How many of you still remember all that?
At the time, calls were ₦50 per minute. It was billed per minute and not per-second billing until Glo came in 2003. Do you still remember phone booth centres where people made calls to their loved ones? I still remember those days one would be making calls and be looking at the timer on the phone not to exceed the minute they had budgeted to speak and paid for. I once made a call of a minute and a second and was charged for two minutes. There was nothing I didn't beg to pay for a minute since it was just a second that entered, but to no avail.
Some of us bought SIM card at ......₦33,000. While those who bought earlier got theirs at ₦75,000 and ₦50,000 respectively.
With those call vouchers, the airtime had an expiry date. The ₦400/₦700 cards had about 30 days validity. ₦1500 was about 60-90 days validity. If you didn't use it within that period, the credit was lost and your line could be deactivated. There was no rollover like now. It was only later, around 2005-2007, after NCC intervention and competition from Glo, Celtel, and Etisalat, that MTN and others moved to long validity (90 days, 180 days), then finally the non-expiring airtime we have today.
How time flies...
Today, we have airtime that doesn't elapse or with a validity period, but there's data subscription which is in the direct opposite. It will gladden my heart if the government can look into it and relate with the service providers that data subscription validity should be scrapped off just like it did on call voucher. So we don't hurriedly exhaust our data once it's nearing its due date. I know someone will say there's rollover, what if there's no money to purchase the same subscription plan that will enable you to roll over your unused data?
In essence, subscription shouldn't come with validity but exhaustion of service paid for just like electricity prepaid service. This should also apply to cable channels and the rest.
It was 1500, 750 and 400 recharge cards
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