Following the growing complaints from service providers and consumers regarding the high incidence of call masking, refilling and SIM boxing, the National Communication Commission, NCC, has barred 750,000 lines and withdrawn licences of some defaulting digital mobile operators.
The NCC latest action was conveyed through a statement by Tony Ojobo, director public affairs of the commission in Abuja.
The statement further stated that NCC had commenced the second phase of investigation into the involvement of digital mobile operators in masking international calls especially.
“The NCC has recently been inundated with complaints from service providers and consumers regarding the high incidence of call masking, call refilling and SIM boxing. Generally, the practice complained of involves disguising international calls as local calls in order to profit from price differentials between international and local calls.
“Apart from the resultant loss of revenue by service providers, the practice also has some negative security implications. Following a painstaking investigation process, which included collaboration with the Office of the National Security Adviser and the Department of State Services, the commission has imposed a range of sanctions on licensees involved in the fraudulent practice,” the statement reads in part.
The sanctions include suspension of the interconnect clearing house license issued to Medallion Communications Limited for a period of 90 days, in the first instance, and issuance of a strong warning to Interconnect Clearinghouse Nigeria Limited.
Others are disconnection of Information Connectivity Solutions Limited and Solid Interconnectivity Services Limited from all networks until they regularise their operations, and issuance of letters to Exchange Telecoms Limited, NiconnX Limited and Breeze Micro Limited, cautioning them against engaging in the fraudulent practice.
Ojobo said the sanctioned entities were found to be directly and indirectly complicit in several infractions, including covertly allowing organisations with expired licences to transit calls and failure to undertake due diligence on parties seeking to interconnect.
Other infractions include deliberately turning a blind eye to masking infractions by interconnect partners and using a licence issued to other organisation to bring in and terminate international calls, which were masked as local calls to other operators.
Ojobo said over 750,000 individual numbers across the nation, made up of about 31 number ranges had been barred.
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The licensees whose numbers were barred are Vezeti Communications Services Limited, Voix Networks Limited, Mobitel Limited, Peace Global Satellite Communications Limited, ABG Communications Limited and Vodacom Business Africa (Nigeria) Limited.
Others are Swift Telephone Networks Limited, QVODA Telecoms Limited, Wireless Telecoms Limited and Emcatel Networks Limited.
The commission’s spokesman stated that investigations revealed that some of the firms were terminating millions of minutes, whereas they only had very few active customers.
“The commission is pleased to note that the incidence of call masking has significantly reduced since it commenced a multi-faceted approach to address the menace. The commission hereby informs all stakeholders that the actions so far taken are just the first stage of the exercise. The second stage, which has now commenced, will focus on the Mobile Network Operators and other persons involved in SIM boxing,” he added.
He said the aim of the commission was to completely stamp out the fraudulent practice in the overall interest of all Nigerians.
He stressed that every service provider that had been sanctioned still had an opportunity to correct the identified anomalies and satisfy the commission that it should be allowed to continue to operate in Nigeria.
He added that the NCC reserved the right to revoke the licences of such service providers where they failed to take the necessary corrective measures.
NCC had over the years been battling with complaints of providers customers through arbitrary charges and pooer services among others.
None of the affected providers had responded to the sanction so far as at the time of this report.
