The menace of grey trafficking in the country must be controlled at the earliest, Information Technology Secretary Kamran Ali Qureshi said on Tuesday.
Chairing a meeting regarding monitoring of grey traffic under International Clearing House (ICH) arrangements, IT Secretary Kamran Ali Qureshi welcomed the participants and apprised that grey traffic had increased considerably and measures should be taken for its control at the earliest.
Telephone companies in different countries use various telecoms routes to send traffic to each other. Grey route or grey traffic is one that falls outside the regular course of business between the licensed telecoms companies in each country.
The member telecom apprised the participants that prior to establishment of International Clearing House Exchange, grey traffic were monitored by the PTA.
The ministry of IT in its various policy directives had directed the PTA from time to time to control grey traffic effectively but there was no proper compliance of its directives.
In fact, the ICH policy was introduced by the previous federal government due to the inefficiency and incapacity of the PTA to control grey traffic and procurement of monitoring equipment was to be made under the said policy.
Unfortunately the PTA, due to its internal lack of coordination and commitment, did not implement ICH policy in its true letter and spirit. Despite repeated instructions/reminders of MoIT equipment has neither been installed nor functioning.
A similar meeting chaired by the IT secretary was also convened two weeks ago at the ministry in which all the stakeholders including the PTA, the LEA and the ICH consortium participated. However, in order to remedy this fault it was mutually agreed in that meeting that monitoring equipment would be installed at the ICH and its interface would be provided at a suitable place designed by the MoIT for joint operation of PTA and security agencies under the supervision of ministry of IT.
It was further agreed in the meeting that a committee, under the chairmanship of an additional secretary (IT) will oversee the monitoring of operating system.
The committee would comprise two representatives each from the PTA, security agencies and MoIT. Upgradation of the system was also declared responsibility of the committee.
