PTA’s measures to curb illegal telecom traffic
By Sohail Raza Qizilbash

Like many other illegal and unhealthy practices which are rife in our society, illegal telecom traffic, also referred to as “grey telephony”, is being indulged in by many in order to make quick money and in the process depriving the national exchequer of its rightful revenue. Basically, this lucrative business operates through obtaining connections of a licensed fixed or cellular operator and installing quantum switches which convert international calls into local ones with the result that international calls appear as local calls on the CLI of any fixed or mobile telephone. The individuals involved in this illegal business claim to provide cheap international calls, but actually they cause loss to the government by depriving it of valuable foreign exchange. It is estimated, based on certain projections, that PTCL is losing millions of minutes per year through these covert gateways.

These illicit telecom operations not only severely affect government revenues but also adversely affect the business of licensed Long Distance and International (LDI) and Local Loop (LL) operators, as the unlawful traffic termination does not involve payment of termination charges and Access Promotion Contribution (APC). Again, on rough estimation basis, this illegal business causes losses of billions of rupees annually.

PTA undertook several measures to arrest this criminal activity. In order to reduce the financial incentive for the operators of grey-telephony, the Accounting Settlement Rate (ASR) was reduced by 38.61 percent during the year 2005-2006 and all LDI operators of Pakistan were asked to reduce the international settlement rates substantially. National Security and Surveillance (NSS) Cell was established in PTCL to monitor grey telephony and inform PTA if it found any illegal international gateway being operated. A separate Monitoring Cell was also created at PTA Headquarters with branches at zonal-offices. Furthermore, PTA launched a campaign in the print media to create awareness among the masses and urge them to inform PTA if they had any information regarding this menace.

In the year and a half following the establishment of vigilance cell at PTA, 24 raids were conducted and not only were they successful in arresting the criminals but material and equipments were also seized. The relevant law that is attracted in this regard is Section 31 of the Pakistan Telecommunication (Re-organisation) Act 1996, under which cases were registered against the culprits. These setups had caused an estimated loss of revenue – around Rs600 million.

In such a case, on a complaint lodged by the NSS Cell of PTCL, a raid was conducted in December 2006 at a house in Officers’ Colony, near Cavalry Ground, Lahore and an operational illegal gateway exchange was seized. The setup was using 512 Kbps bandwidth for international connectivity while seven GSM SIMs were being used for local termination. The confiscated equipment included two VoIP gateways, 19 Telular devices along with other accessories and scratch cards worth millions of rupees; a computer science graduate was the mastermind who was arrested and booked.

Although these measures undertaken on the initiative of PTA were effective in substantially reducing the illegal trafficking but it was realised that more is needed to be done in order to eradicate this menace. Taking cognizance of this vital need, the Federal Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication constituted a Vigilance Committee under the convenership of Chairman PTA. The members included Member Telecom, Ministry of IT and Telecom, President PTCL, Chairman NTC, Director General Special Communication Organisation (SCO), Joint Secretary, Ministry of Interior and Director General (Enforcement), PTA. The first meeting of the committee was held in July 2006. It was also attended by representatives of GHQ, security agencies and telecom operators. The convener asked the DSL operators and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to furnish antecedents of static IP addresses to PTA on monthly basis so that the data could be used to locate suspected IP users. He also highlighted the development of capability of analysing Call Data Record (CDR) at PTA that would enable them to identify illegal sources of call termination.

During the meeting, useful suggestions were offered by the members. While the member telecom emphasised the need to create public awareness on the issue so that the public could help in eliminating this menace. President PTCL supported the efforts of PTA and suggested more aggressive measures. A technical solution was also proposed to be installed for this purpose. A sub-committee was, therefore, constituted under Joint Secretary, Ministry of Interior to meet once a month not only to review the progress on various steps taken to curb the illegal call termination business, but also to evaluate the implementation of the technical solution.

As part of its comprehensive strategy to combat this nefarious business, the technical solution was of great importance. The latest development in this regard is that an agreement has been entered into between PTA and “Inbox Business Technologies” to acquire and deploy the technical solution for addressing this evil.

The technical solution has been developed by Narus Inc., a US based company which is also the leader in carrier class security for the world’s largest IP networks. It is a production proven solution which is currently being used by various telecom operators across the globe including such names as AT&T, Telecom Egypt, Saudi Telecom, Brazil Telecom etc.

The main objectives of the solution are automated detection of grey-traffic by filtering IP traffic of the country for detection of illegal VoIP on data circuits to enable its subsequent elimination and revenue assurance for LDI operators. It would also report the volume of traffic terminated by LDI operators, thus helping in reconciliation of their traffic. An important feature of this project is that it would measure Quality of Service (QoS) parameters of the IP traffic enabling the regulator to keep a check over the QoS being offered to the customers.

This is a turnkey project being funded by all major stakeholders. Ministry of IT and PTA would be contributing 10 percent each while the rest would be shared by PTCL and other LDI operators based on their share in international incoming traffic in the year 2006. It is not just expected but strongly believed that after the deployment of the technical solution, the revenue loss suffered by government would be eliminated, thereby ensuring healthy revenues and a level playing field for all the players. The bottom line is that the telecom industry would be the real beneficiary of this project.