PTA blocks 0.2m IP addresses in fresh drive against grey traffic
KARACHI: One month into operation, the newly acquired grey traffic monitoring equipment seems to have enabled the telecom regulator to cause some serious damage to gateway exchanges involved in grey traffic – illegal termination of international calls landing in Pakistan.
Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocked more than 200,000 Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, 1,382 mobile SIMs and 3,160 phones or devices through their International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers in October, PTA said in a statement.
The data for the first month since the installation of the new equipment to curb grey traffic, looks impressive when seen in the context of the regulator’s performance over the last couple of years. PTA had struggled to curb grey traffic until recently.
Grey traffic accounts for more than 50% of overall monthly international traffic coming to Pakistan, causing losses of over Rs3.5 billion or $35 million a year to the national exchequer.
This loss is brought by illegal gateway exchanges that bypass legal gateways to terminate or originate international telephone traffic by using voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) gateways, wireless local loop (WLL) phones and mobile phone SIMs.
The grey traffic monitoring system, which has been operational since early October 2013, has the capability to automatically block the IPs, which are not in the PTA’s white list – a list of IP addresses which are clear and not involved in any suspicious activity.
Installed as per directives of the Grey Traffic Monitoring Committee of PTA, the new equipment has helped the telecom regulator conduct an extensive audit of the IPs on its white list.
Now, “white-listing of IPs” is being done after stringent checks, the statement said, and a strict standard operating procedure has been devised in this regard. As a result, the IP white list has been rationalised and reduced from 51,000 to 10,360.
In one recent case, grey traffic was detected by PTA and on further analysis it was established that a Long Distance and International (LDI) operator, Wise Communication Private Limited, was involved in grey traffic, the statement said.
A joint raid was conducted by PTA and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) and illegal terminating equipment was confiscated and culprits were apprehended.
Initial estimates suggest that a total of 11 million minutes per month were being illegally brought into Pakistan by the company, which showed international calls as local minutes, thus evading over $31,000 a day in government taxes.
In two other raids conducted in Karachi, PTA along with FIA confiscated nine gateways, the statement said.
To intensify their campaign, PTA has also set up a 24-hour complaint centre to receive complaints. Through this facility, the statement said, 1,944 complaints were received until November 9. The numbers reported were not only blocked but also analysed for legal action.
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