A few
weeks back, the Nigerian Communications Commission wielded its hammer on
regulation of the industry to fall on those licensees allegedly accused of
call-masking, call-refiling and SIM-boxing. REMMY NWEKE writes that though a
new dawn in the fight against ‘telecom’ corruption, there is need to shun
politically motivated regulations in the sector.
Finally, it came to pass that the Nigerian Communications
Commission (NCC) rested the hammer on some telecommunications licensees
for the alleged three-count charge, namely call-masking, call-refiling and
SIM-Boxing.
The hammer, ITRealms gathered,
came as the Commission equally barred over 750,000 numbers assigned to Private
Network Links (PNL) and Local Exchange Operator (LEO) licensees, found to be
aiding and abating this unwholesome practice.
Call
masking:
ITRealms gathered from experts, for instance that call-masking
could be defined as ensuring user’s privacy, thus protecting private information
on calls and texts as it does not expose the user’s permanent number.
Hence, masked phone numbers are a common pattern to anonymize communication
between multiple parties and hide participant phone numbers. Instead of dialing
directly from phone to phone, users communicate via a third ('proxy') phone
number that forwards a call to the eventual
destination.
Just as Freshworks.com experts, say that ‘Call Masking’ is facilitating the use of your global number to
use your local number. Their counterparts at Twilio.com, said, “Masked calling is a technique
used in ecommerce to protect buyers' and sellers' personal phone numbers
private. The same technique can also allow the parties to send SMS to each
other without revealing their personal phone numbers.
On the other hand,
Call-refiling has been defined as tweaking of calls originating on one network
but carried by another at some point between source and destination. Refiling is a form of
interconnect fraud in which one carrier tampers with CID (caller-ID) or Automatic Number Identification (ANI) data
to falsify the number from which a call originated
before handing the call off
to a competitor, thus a phone fraud, according to open sourced encyclopedia,
Wikipedia.org. Even as Automatic
number identification (ANI) is a
feature of a telecommunications network for automatically determining the
origination telephone number on toll calls for billing purposes.
What is SIM-Boxing:
Equally important in this case as fingered by NCC
as part of the reasons for resting the hammer on some licensees, is the
SIM-Boxing, which experts say is also known as SIM bank and described as a device used as part of a Voice over Internet Protocol
(VoIP) gateway installation. Wikipedia.org further explained that SIM-Boxing
contains a number of SIM cards,
which are linked to the gateway but housed and stored separately from it.
Sanctioned:
The Director, Public Affairs Department of NCC, Mr. Tony Ojobo,
confirmed these sanctions to ITRealms, penultimate
Tuesday, saying they were recently inundated with complaints from service
providers and consumers regarding the high incidence of call-masking,
call-refiling and SIM-Boxing, hence they have to take action. He went on to define
the practice complained of as “disguising international calls as local calls in
order to profit from price differentials between international and local calls.
Apart from the resultant loss of revenue by service providers, the practice
some also has negative security implications.”
Following a painstaking investigation process which included
collaboration with the Office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the
Department of State Services, Ojobo said, the Commission decided to impose a
range of sanctions on licensees involved in the fraudulent practices, leading
to the suspension of the Interconnect Clearinghouse License issued to Medallion
Communications Limited for a period of 90 (ninety) days from Tuesday, February
27, 2018, in the first instance; Issuance of a strong warning to Interconnect
Clearinghouse Nigeria Limited; Disconnection of Information Connectivity
Solutions Limited (ICSL) and Solid Interconnectivity Services Limited from all
networks, until they regularize their operations.
Ojobo additionally disclosed that NCC issued letters of caution to
three other licensees, namely the Exchange Telecoms Limited, NiconnX Limited
and Breeze Micro Limited, warning them against engaging in the fraudulent
practice, whereas, barring over 750,000 numbers assigned to several Private
Network Links (PNL) and Local Exchange Operator (LEO) licensees, which number
ranges were found to have been utilized for the practice.
The sanctioned entities, NCC spokesman said were found to be
directly and indirectly complicit in several infractions, including covertly
allowing organisations with expired licenses to transit calls, failure to
undertake due diligence on parties seeking to interconnect, deliberately
turning a blind eye to masking infractions by interconnect partners, and using
a licence issued to another organisation to bring-in and terminate
international calls which were masked as local calls to other operators.
750,000
barred:
On the barring of numbers, Ojobo had reiterated that over 750,000
individual numbers across the nation, made up of about 31 number ranges have
been barred, namely Vezeti Communications Services Limited, Voix Networks
Limited, Mobitel Limited, Peace Global Satellite Communications Limited, ABG
Communications Limited, Vodacom Business Africa (Nigeria) Limited, Swift
Telephone Networks Limited, QVODA Telecoms Limited, Wireless Telecoms Limited
and Emcatel Networks Limited.
As said by NCC, culprits were found to be terminating millions of
minutes, whereas they only have very few active customers; “The Commission is
pleased to note that the incidence of call masking has significantly reduced
since it commenced a multi-faceted approach to address the menace,” Ojobo said.
Insisting that the actions so far taken by NCC, were just the first stage of
the exercise, stressing that the second stage which has now commenced, will
focus on the Mobile Network Operators and other persons involved in SIM-Boxing.
Revoking
of license:
“The aim of the Commission is to completely stamp out the
fraudulent practice in the overall interest of all Nigerians. Accordingly,
every service provider that has been sanctioned still has an opportunity to
correct the identified anomalies and satisfy the Commission that it should be
allowed to continue to operate in Nigeria.
“The Commission reserves
the right to revoke the licence of such service providers where they fail to
take the necessary corrective measures,” NCC declared.
Conclusion:
Although, a school of
thought in the industry actually wondered what NCC should be doing if their
licensees are to take over regulation or examination of licensees whose mandate
from the Commission have expired, though the issue of due diligence was where
they were nailed despite some ambiguity around whose responsibility that is.
Above all, the resting of hammer on some NCC licensees is not
unprecedented as its clearly stated in their licensing agreement as well as the
National Communication Act of 2003, section 37 subsection 1 & 2 as well as
the entire aspect of license conditions from Section 34 through 38, among
others.
Whilst appealing to all stakeholders to be alive to their
responsibilities so as to avoid politically motivated regulations of the nation’s
telecommunications sector, Nigeria will be better for it.
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