[ 2015-01-27 ]

Telcos must reduce prices to stop SIM box fraud - Sakyi Addo
The CEO at Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications,
Kwaku Sakyi Addo has called on the country’s
mobile network operators to review their prices on
international calls into Ghana to make SIM box
fraud unattractive to fraudsters.

According to him, SIM box fraudsters are attracted
to the operation due to the high cost of charges
on international calls into the country.

An ex-president of the Ghana Real Estate
Developers Association (GREDA), Dr Alexander
Tweneboah, was on Monday arrested for sponsoring
the activities of SIM box fraudsters.

According to the police, Dr. Tweneboah has
confessed to committing the crime and owning the
devices used in the illegal activities.

The Director General of the CID, DCOP Prosper
Ablorh said about GH¢100 million has gone down
the drain due to such illegal activities.

Sakyi Addo told Citi FM Monday, that “SIM boxing
is a law and order problem...it is a pricing
problem; this is the position of the industry.

“If you remove the incentive that makes SIM
boxing attractive then you will remove the
problem, you would unearth the root cause of the
problem.

“If you don’t unearth and eliminate that
incentive for it, ten years from now we would be
having these press conferences but it would not
get to the bottom of it”.

Sakyi Addo added: “It costs 19 cents a minute to
make a call into Ghana...so there is an incentive
because the network operators are obliged to
charge not less than 19 cents a minute for a call
coming into Ghana [but] the SIM box fraudsters are
terminating calls into Ghana for much less than
that, so the network operators are uncompetitive
and yet these people operating in the dark are
terminating calls in the grey market through SIM
boxing so people making calls oversees find the
grey market more attractive because you can stay
on the line for longer and for cheaper.

“It costs two hundred times more to call Ghana
from the UK than it cost to call Nigeria, so there
is no SIM box [fraud] in Nigeria because in
Nigeria it costs 3 cent to call oversees...if you
try to operate a SIM box fraud in Nigeria it
won’t work, you won’t make any money therefore
it doesn’t exist in Nigeria...same as in South
Africa.

“So this our petition, we need to address the
pricing differential between what is charged
domestically and what is charged for international
incoming calls”.

Source - Starrfmonline

... go Back