ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) claimed arrest of 116 persons including seven foreigners found involved in grey trafficking in the country, it is learnt.
According to the latest figures 943 illegal equipment have also been confiscated in the drive against grey trafficking. Lahore tops the list where 29 raids were carried out and 231 gateways were confiscated, besides arrest of 23 persons in the post International Clearing House (ICH) scenario. About 18 raids were conducted in Karachi where 22 persons were arrested and 91 gateways confiscated; 16 raids were carried out in Rawalpindi where 14 people were arrested besides confiscating 79 gateways.
The PTA identifies the illegal call termination/grey setups through a monitoring system analysis that of heavy callers' data, investigation of other suspected information and accordingly ensures action envisaged in Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-Organization Act, 1996).
However industry sources said that PTA has yet to make a major breakthrough in controlling grey trafficking, as the trend of illegal calls is going on unabated, causing billions of rupees loss to the exchequer annually, besides posing serious security threats.
The phenomenon of illegal incoming calls is similar to smuggling for which exact losses cannot be determined, but surely it is denting the national kitty in billions, officials sources revealed to Business Recorder.
The government has already installed state-of-the-art equipment worth Rs 2.8 billion financed by telecom operators at PTA headquarter to stop grey trafficking. Further, the Authority introduced 24/7 call service for grey traffic reporting at headquarters and launched awareness campaign in the media against grey telephony. However, the desired results are yet to be achieved as the trend of grey trafficking is on the rise, sources added.
The Ministry of Information Technology and Telecom had issued a policy directive on August 13, 2012 to establish ICH exchange for international incoming calls for Long Distance International (LDI), Fixed-Line Local Loop, Wireless Local Loop and mobile operators. The volume of incoming calls prior to the ICH agreement was two billion minutes monthly, which has declined to about 500 million minutes after the establishment of ICH, however it is still unclear why there has been a decline. The PTA officials claimed that with regard to the decline in volume of international incoming minutes, a number of variables such as cost of the incoming call, increasing usage of Over The Top (OTT) applications such as Viber, Skype, availability of cost-effective higher bandwidth, etc, have attributed to reduction in overall incoming international traffic.
Since 2009, a total of 130 joint raids with FIA have been carried out across the country. Consequently, 116 persons including 7 foreigners were apprehended during the raids besides confiscation of 943 illegal equipment. The PTA along with Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) conducted several raids recently and seized functional illegal gateway exchange in different cities. Over 500,000 suspected Internet Protocol (IP) addresses and thousands of illegal SIMs through their International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers were blocked in its on-going drive to curb grey traffic. Business Recorder by TAHIR AMIN
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