ISLAMABAD, May 26: A joint team of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) on Monday busted an illegal international gateway exchange functioning in the Defence Housing Authority.

The illegal setup was detected through the “Technical Solution” recently installed by the PTA to monitor illegal telecom business across the country. This appeared to be the first illegal operation detected through this facility made operational on May 1.

The PTA-FIA team conducted a raid on a bungalow in DHA and found the “international gateway exchange” where 130 Mbps bandwidth was being used for international connectivity and hundreds of GSM SIMs were employed.

The equipment seized in the raid included six Quantum Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateways with 24 ports each and other devices with accessories.

It is estimated that the set-up had caused a loss to the exchequer to the tune of Rs25 million over the last 10 months.

While the FIA is continuing the investigation, the PTA believes that allied set-ups may also be unearthed shortly.

PTA has acquired the Technical Solution for addressing the menace of grey traffic brought into the country through illegal means in September 2007. “Grey telephony” is a term used for illegal telecom traffic.

The illegal activity converts foreign calls made to the country as “local calls” which is an offence under the Telecom Reorganisation Act-1996.—APP