Communications Ministry fires back at telecom operators

Accra, Dec. 17, GNA - The Ministry of Communications (MOC) has said in spite of the criticisms from telecom operators, it would continue to supp= ort and encourage the National Communications Authority (NCA) to pursue its 'call busting' activities and help to protect the Ghana telecoms market f= rom the dumping effects of the illegal activities within the sector. "Government of Ghana is committed to the implementation of the international gateway monitoring exercise and the compliance with the national laws will not be compromised," it said.

This was contained in a five-page response to a communiqu=E9 issued b= y the West Africa Telecommunications Conference (WATC) and endorsed by the Ghan= a Telecommunications Chamber (GTC). The communiqu=E9, titled "Dakar Declarations - concerning internation= al call monitoring", was published in a local newspaper and portions of it h= ave since been published in various media in country. The communiqu=E9 condemned the monitoring, levying and surcharges on incoming international calls and called on telecom operators in West Afri= can states to resist it. The WATC said it breached a number of international telecom laws and treaties and threatened to lead to fraud, increase consumer burden and al= so reduce international call traffic and revenue. They pledged support for telecom operators and pledged their commitmen= t to fight the system until it was weeded out from the continent.

The MOC, however, said the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications would=

not have rushed to endorse the communiqu=E9 if they had had the full understanding of international telecom laws and how they related to developing countries and to Ghana in particular. "In the rush to discredit the exercise by regulatory authorities in Africa to establish mechanisms to protect the markets from dumping and anti-competitive practices and raise revenue for development, the telecom=

operators in their statement made serious misrepresentations, for which reason it is necessary to throw more light on the international telecom operations," he said.

The statement said contrary to the assertion that the system will red= uce incoming international traffic, the records showed that incoming international calls had increased considerably since the implementation started in Ghana and revenue had gone up. It said with regard to the assertion that the tax increased the retail=

prices, it was pertinent to note that in Ghana, Act 786 specifically provided in section 1.3 that "a network operator shall not charge its customers for its services because of the minimum rate for international incoming electronic communication traffic. "It is therefore incumbent on the telecom operators to comply and ens= ure that no increase in retail prices will be made on account of the observan= ce of the minimum rate for international incoming traffic to affect subscribers/ consumers," it said.

The statement noted that since the exercise started in Ghana, 59,180 fraudulent SIM Cards had been found and reported to the respective teleco= m operators and 8,000 of those were from Vodafone and Airtel alone. It insisted that it was only helpful that in an industry where fraudulent characters were able to acquire multiple SIM Cards, continued service from telecom operators and the ability to terminate international=

traffic, there should be strict regulations to ensure government did not lose revenue.

The MOC said the WATC/GTC also got it wrong when they required Ghana t= o obey a treaty from Bamako, saying that the meeting of ICT Ministers in Bamako on 29th July, 2010 was a meeting of the UEMOA member countries, wh= ich was a francophone grouping that Ghana did not belong to. It noted that the WATC conference in November was sponsored and organized by France Telecom, and was attended by Vodafone and some operat= ors in an ostensible attempt to frustrate the regulation of the activities of=

the telecom operators in the wake of the increasing popularity of the success of anti-fraud activities being undertaken by the NCA.

"The France Telecom-engineered conference has made an assumption that the tax on international traffic runs counter to the decision of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference of 1998 that requires settlement fees to be co= st based. "This statement demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of the ITU - The=

protocols of a Plenipotentiary Conference also reserve the right of individual countries to set aside the provisions of the Conference where these conflict with sovereign interests of the particular country.

The MOC said it was strange that telecom operators in Africa would allow themselves to be misled by France Telecom to criticize a system tha= t was working to ensure sanity in the telecom industry as sanctioned by the=

ITU, whiles France and other European countries like Portugal, Hungary an= d Spain had several special telecom taxes in their countries. "Aside from these special taxes, the European countries also imposed General Telecom tax, Numbering tax; Spectrum tax; and Land occupation tax= on operators for occupation of land for the deployment of their networks. The Ministry insisted that they would continue to do what was right b= y the people of Ghana, and in accordance to domestic and international laws=

and protocols.