National Communications Authority (NCA), Ghana’s apex telecommunications regulatory body has asked Glo Mobile in Ghana to clamp down on the use of illegal SIM boxes on its network for international calls.
SIM box fraud is an illegal process in which some unscrupulous persons in Ghana connive with partners abroad to re-route international calls and terminate them through a local phone number in Ghana to make it appear as if the call is a local one and, therefore, pay lower rates.
The regulator said that Glo has two weeks to shut down boxes.
NCA issued the warning after finding that the use of SIM Boxes to bypass the international termination rates payable to the landline network had surged on the Glo network.
Statistics from the NCA indicate that there has been a dramatic increase in fraudulent SIMs from around 2,500 in January, 2013, to nearly 30,000 in August, 2013.
This has put Glo in the lead with the highest number of fraudulent bypass activities, terminating international call traffic on other mobile operators’ platforms, thereby causing huge financial losses to the government and other operators.
Officials of Glo Ghana however said it was not Glo, as an institution, which is perpetrating the fraudulent activities but that they are the handiwork of fraudsters who have taken advantage of the low congestion, high speed Internet connectivity, low cost of charges and the freebies offered by the company on its platform to its clients.
The officials of Glo say the company is losing more, as it is not gaining anything from the international calls but have to pay other operators who end up receiving those calls purportedly emanating from Glo.
They described SIM box fraud as the telecom ‘galamsey’ eating deep into revenues of telecom operators.