The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC is to launch a New Technology to end call masking in the country. The Executive Vice Chairman Professor Umar Danbatta who was represented by Commissioner Stakeholders Management Mr. Sunday Dare stated this recently during the 86th Edition of Telecom Consumer Parliament in, Abuja, Nigeria.
Professor Danbatta said the new technology would go a long way in curbing the menace.
According to Danbatta, Call masking/refiling is when an international call is terminated in Nigeria as a local number.
“As I speak now we have found a solution after the proof of concept.
We have tried that concept, it is working and we hope to launch it in January. If it is launched in January; I can assure Nigerians that before the end of 2019, we would have had 80% reduction in call masking,” he said.
He stated that the telecom sector loses over 60billion dollars annually to Call Masking globally.
“We don’t have the exact figures for Nigeria but globally $54-$60 is lost to call masking. Which shows that it is a global menace which is not specific to Nigeria and it is possible because of innovative technology that is available, “he said.
On some of the measures taken by the NCC so far Danbatta said the Commission has recorded some level of success in curbing call masking in the country.
“But we are happy to say for the last eight months, the NCC took very proactive measures, investigations we worked with our task force to have been able to reduce the incidence sim boxing in this country by 34%,” he said.
“When you look at the roadmap so far, 2016, it started, in 2017, we started investigations. We moved from reducing it to 24% to 34%. I think the most critical point is; we have tried to look for a technological solution to solve what is a slight technical problem,” he explained.
The perpetrators have ulterior motives of profiting from price differentials between international and local calls termination rates.
According to the Commission, call masking is being perpetrated with small movable devices called SIM boxes, which are electronic boxes loaded with SIM Numbers. A SIM box has the capacity to receive and transmit calls undetected.
However, the challenge is that these SIM boxes are never type-approved by the Commission, a clear indication that they are being used illegally in the country.
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