LAHORE: The marathon exercise of biometric verification of SIMs and withdrawal of the International Clearing House (ICH) could not eliminate grey traffic as incoming international calls up to one billion minutes per month are still being routed through the illegal channel.

The volume of incoming international calls had dropped from about two billion minutes (white traffic) to 400 million minutes per month after the establishment of ICH in October 2012 as the authorities concerned had no control over grey traffic.

However, after the biometric verification of SIMs and withdrawal of the ICH (three months ago), the government could only add 600 million minutes per month to the white traffic, failing to add remaining one billion more minutes per month to it (white traffic) by eliminating all channels of the grey traffic.

“Traffic volume at the time of withdrawal of ICH (some three months ago) was around 400 million minutes per month. During the last three months time, traffic has taken its intrinsic value of one billion which shows that grey has been minimised to negligible level,” the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority said in response to a Dawn’s query.

The other factors which the PTA sees have contributed to regaining the lost minutes (from grey traffic) are “fair competition in service providers, active market forces and biometric verification of SIMs”.

Only 600m minutes per month added to white traffic after SIMs verification, ICH withdrawal

Under the ICH, the entire incoming telephonic traffic was put at the disposal of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). All the 14 long distance and international (LDI) operators formed a consortium which through an agreement allowed the PTCL to manage the incoming telephone traffic and, in return, receive their proportionate share in the income.

The PTA further said: “At the time, when ICH was introduced (in 2012) and call termination rates were raised from the prevailing market rate of around 2 cents per minute (least incentive for grey market) to 8.8 cents (highly lucrative for grey), incoming traffic dropped from 1.8 billion to 1 billion minutes in the first month after ICH. This figure can be taken as a market potential for incoming voice calls when the rates are minimum. Because of high rates of 8.8 cents per min, white traffic started decreasing and diverted to either grey routes.”

Still illegal exchanges using SIMs are operating across the country and the Federal Investigation Agency in collaboration with the PTA has been unearthing the illegal gateway exchanges.

During the last few months, the FIA Lahore region has unearthed around 80 such exchanges operating in different parts of Punjab.

Grey traffic is defined as the use of illegal exchanges for making international calls, bypassing the legal routes and exchanges. These illegal exchanges include VOIP (Voice-Over Internet Protocol) that uses a computer; GSM (Global System for Mobile) gateways; WLL (Wireless Local Loop) phones or mobile SIMs.

Grey traffic is the international incoming voice traffic which is routed in such a way and on such protocols and encryption modes which enable the grey trafficker to hide the traffic from being monitored so that levies can be avoided, thus causing millions of rupees per month loss to the national exchequer.

Published in Dawn, May 12th, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play