[ 2012-05-14 ]

Telcos welcome NCA’s international call audit
Telecom operators in the country have welcomed the
move by the National Communication Authority (NCA)
to audit all call data records (CDR) to ensure
that what each telco reported monthly was exactly
how many minutes of international call coming
through their respective networks.

Director of Reglatory Administration of the NCA,
Joshua Peprah recently announced that the NCA
would start the audit within the next three
months, and any telco found ‘lying’ about how many
minutes of international calls came to Ghana
through their network could lose their license.

The NCA had years ago tried to install
international gateway monitoring equipment on the
switches of the telcos to monitor the
international traffic in real time, but an Accra
Fast Track High Court ruled in favour of some
persons who took the NCA and the telcos to court
and proved that those equipment could comprise
customer privacy and interfere with quality of
service.

Mr. Preprah told Adom News the equipment had been
configured to only take call data from the
switches and never to input any information into
the systems of the telcos, so the concerns about
interference were only a perception and not a
reality.

But since that had been stopped by the courts, he
said the NCA had been working with a consultant on
how to verify the records and secure revenue for
the state, adding that part of that process would
be the audit of the records and systems of the
telcos.

Each of the four main GSM operators have said they
welcome the audit because the NCA already does
some form of audit of their records and systems to
verify that they did not lie about the amount of
incoming international calls.

Revenue Assurance and Risk Manager at Vodafone
said the company had been doing several checks at
various levels before submitting its call data
records to the NCA so it was sure of its accuracy
and was therefore not perturbed by the audit.

Written responses to Adom News, in the name of the
Corporate Service Executive of MTN Ghana, Cynthia
Lumor, said auditing of CDR was not a problem to
MTN, adding that the NCA had already been sending
officials to MTN to verify the data it sent, and
that for MTN it was a form of audit.

Similar responses from Airtel in the name of Head
of Corporate Affairs, Donald Gwira said “Airtel
Ghana has no problem with the proposed audit,”
adding that the NCA had been verifying Airtel’s
CDRs since June 2010.

Donald Gwira said NCA only issued invoices to
Airtel for the Gateway Monitoring Fee based on the
verification of the CDRs, adding that Airtel
continued to follow all rules and regulations that
governed its operations and was therefore
confident it would not be found wanting in the
event of any such audit.

An official of Tigo Ghana also expressed similar
sentiments, saying that Tigo had always presented
accurate records to the NCA, including its
financial statements.

“We have greater amount of domestic traffic that
we are managing so we are not going to waste our
time trying to be dodgy with records of incoming
international traffic – lots of the international
traffic meant for Tigo are brought in by other
telcos anyway so why should we damage our
integrity on something relatively smaller,” the
official said.

On the issue of why telcos have refused to allow
the NCA to install its real time verification
systems on their switches, MTN said there were
concerns about those equipment interfering with
customer privacy and with quality of service, for
which customer could sue MTN, and the NCA could
also fine MTN.

Airtel referred to the court ruling - Amankwa
Appiah and two others versus NCA, A-G and five
others -, saying that ruling made it impossible
for Airtel to allow the NCA to install those
equipment because it had legal implications for
both Airtel and the NCA.

Vodafone's Radcliffe said the company had invested
millions of dollars in equipment to check fraud on
its network, and it did not think it needed extra
external equipment, which also threaten the
privacy of its customers and to interfere with its
quality of service.

Meanwhile some telcos have raised doubts about
whether indeed those equipment had the capacity to
prevent SIM Box fraud, or were just meant for
securing revenue for the state.

Source - Adom News

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