Telecoms, internet in Pakistan

Traditional anti-illegal-termination article from a traditional source. There is no mention of grey traffic being terminated by any of the LDI’s. I suspect that ALL LDI’s, including PTCL, are guilty of grey traffic.

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APP
Saturday, 13 January 2007
ISLAMABAD, Jan 13 (APP): Grey Market Telephony (GMT) is a menace that not only affects rightful revenue of telecom operators but also deprives the national exchequer of handsome amount of Rs. 3 billion every year.

It is a dilemma of all developing countries and telecom regulators around the globe who are striving to find a solution to this problem.

Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is fully aware of the situation and has adopted appropriate measures in collaboration with all stake- holders to win the war against grey telephony.

Just to inform the people what is GMT, what are the prevalent reasons of its growth and why it is a source of concern for all of us we should know the basics of Grey Market Telephony.

The main ingredient of grey market telephony which offers a high financial incentive for illegal operators is grey call following a grey route. A call which does not follow a prescribed or authorized route is said to be Grey and the path it follows is called Grey Route.

The question usually arises why GMT is done? the answer to this query is that GMT is done to avail unfair financial advantage and in order to understand the situation, first we will have to know about accounting rate regime.

PTA’s experience shows that the trends of grey market have changed from last few years. Instead of termination on satellite links, VoIP is mostly used these days via DSL.

The other challenge is non-availability of the technical solution for automated detection and hence elimination of grey traffic needs to be tackled.

When contacted, sources at PTA said the Authority is fully aware of the gravity of the situation and has established Vigilance Cell to deal exclusively with issues of grey market telephony.

As discussed earlier, high settlement rates provide incentive to illegal operators to bypass legal gateways. PTA has reduced Accounting Settlement Rates (ASR) by 38.6% during last one year to lessen financial advantage to grey operators and discourage such practices. PTA has issued Policy Guidelines to telecom operators, enabling them to evolve their procedures for arresting the menace at their own level.

Certain directives have also been given to operators which can help in eliminating grey market. PTA has also evaluated several proposals of technical solutions and steps are being taken to acquire technical facility. The Authority has conducted 31 raids during last two years against illegal operators thereby saving millions of rupees. During the raids around 27 illegal operators were arrested. Two cases have been decided while rest are in courts for trial.
The sources said comprehensive measures would be taken with the help of all concerned agencies to eliminate the grey traffic business from the country.