PTA seizes 89 exchanges in 2013

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) with the help of the Federal Investigative Agency (FIA) confiscated 89 exchanges and arrested 21 persons in 22 raids conducted across Pakistan in 2013.

According to a report released by the PTA, this year till May, the authority conducted four raids in Islamabad during which it confiscated eight exchanges and arrested three persons.

From the period from June to August 2013, the PTA conducted 18 raids, confiscated 81 exchanges and arrested 18 persons across Pakistan.

In Karachi, five raids were carried out, 43 exchanges were confiscated and 18 persons were arrested. Two raids were made in Multan, one in Islamabad and four raids were conducted in Rawalpindi. Some 24 exchanges were seized and four persons were arrested.

One raid was conducted in Peshawar, three raids were conducted in Sargodha and nine exchanges were confiscated. In Sahiwal, one raid was conducted which resulted in confiscation of one exchange and arrest of a person while in Lahore one raid was conducted, four exchanges were seized and one person was arrested.

The ministry of information technology and telecommunications issued a policy directive on August, 13, 2012, for establishment of International Clearing House (ICH) Exchange for international incoming calls for Long Distance International, Fixed-Line Local Loop, Wireless Local Loop and Mobile Operators.

The FIA director general constituted a committee and requested for coordination from the PTA to curb menace of grey traffic.

Accordingly, a separate committee has been constituted in May 2013, comprising of officers from the PTA and the FIA with a scope of investigation and detections of illegal setups, planning of raid actions and follow-up of the cases.

It was decided that the meeting of the committee will be held twice in a month.

In general, the grey traffic can be defined as “the use of illegal gateway exchanges to bypass the legal gateways and terminate/originate international traffic, through VoIP gateways to avoid applicable taxes and/or regulatory fee”.

According to Deregulation Policy 2003, net incoming international traffic generates a financial premium over the cost of conveying and terminating the traffic into Pakistan, called “Approved Settlement Rate” (“ASR”). The ASR has two portions – “Access Promotion Contribution” (“APC”) used for infrastructure development which is deposited in Universal Service Fund (USF) and Long Distance International (LDI) Operator’s share.

To curb the menace of grey traffic, the PTA has taken effective measures as per its mandate including both technical and regulatory measures. Regulatory measure include rationalisation of the ASR and the PTA as per provision of de-regulation policy reviews the ASR rate at which operators obtain traffic from foreign carriers.

Technical measure includes monitoring of international traffic and the PTA deployed a technical system for monitoring and reconciliation of international telephone traffic with the funding of LDI operators. The system became functional in May 2008.

The aim was to monitor all international traffic being terminated into Pakistan. Currently the system is only monitoring 6 percent of the total bandwidth and its capacity is decreasing on daily basis.

With the issuance of International Clearing House (ICH) Policy Directive by the ministry of IT & Telecom, a new system has been purchased and the same has yet to be installed in the ministry of IT & Telecom. The reports of setups with irregular traffic patterns achieved through system and analysis of heavy callers’ data were shared with the FIA for raid action.

A total of 88 joint raids with the FIA have been carried so far across the country since 2009. Some 78 persons including six foreigners were apprehended during the raids beside confiscation of a total of 591 illegal gateway equipment.

Mobile numbers involved in illegal call termination (Grey Traffic) are being identified by law enforcement agencies and Vigilance Directorate PTA.