Uche Onwudiwe is the chief operating officer of Interconnect Clearing House, one of the companies licensed by Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to implement Number Portability in the telecom space. His experience in the industry dates back to 1994 when he ran a company called Technologies Incorporated in the US before his return to Nigeria. He spoke to chike onwuegbuchi on issues around the company’s effort in preparation for the commencement of Number Portability in the country later this year, as well how the company is reconciling operators’ bills that arise from interconnectivity.

Interconnect Clearing House in the Telecom Space

The role of Interconnect Clearing House is to act as an intermediary for traffic and fees passed from one operator to another. In essence, if operator A wants to send traffic to operator B, instead of creating links to each operator in the industry, he can create a central link to Interconnect Clearing House from there we would pass the traffic to everybody. This reduces infrastructure cost, reduces over head and makes transit of traffic and the fees associated with that traffic a lot easier. Our job is to carry traffic from one operator to the other operator in a seamless and efficient manner as well as paying fees from one operator to the other for the traffic that has been carried.

Reconciling Bills

There are two issues to that. One is payment of bills; the second issue is reconciliation to make sure that the bills are accurate. Our role is to work on both. One of them we can do easily, the second we cannot easily carry out. For the reconciliation and accuracy of the bills, we can through our switch validate the accuracy of traffic that passes through us to the other operators. We can do that by the actual volume of traffic that we see coming through and we can also do it by comparing the traffic that all other operators send to other persons.  This can be verified either through the operator who receives the traffic or through the operator who sends the traffic. That is part of the reconciliation of making sure the numbers are accurate.

The second issue is about collecting payments. We do our best to make sure that we collect payments from all the debtors and pay them to the creditors.  In cases where there is an operator who is having issues in the industry or their businesses and does not have the money to pay, there will be a settlement of debts.  We try to work out ways which will help them manage their debts either by exchange of traffic or by giving them payment plans to help offset it. So we are working towards reducing debts in the industry.  We also offer options of security deposits and bank guarantees for those who can get them.

The debts that are still out there are with those companies that are not doing so well. Their business is actually struggling which is why they have the high levels of debts but for those who are trying to be in business and working towards making their payments, the invoices they receive are more accurate so they are not over billed or under billed for anything.

Subduing Smaller Operators 

Our role as a neutral party is to ensure that small and large operators are connected and they have the capacity they need. Our position is to make sure traffic flows freely; we make our money based on the traffic that flows, so there is no incentive for us if we restrict traffic. Anybody can come to us for connectivity whether you need one E1 or you need a fibre link with multiple exchange points, we connect with you then our role is to ensure that we inform all other operators that the new Operator/Service provider is connected to us and traffic between both parties should be routed through us. We would guarantee their payments. We will make sure as the Clearinghouse that traffic from any  operator that comes to us, we assure the other operators that they will get their money and vice versa. It is our role to ensure that everybody can connect and that everybody has capacity. If we notice that one operator is subduing or not accepting traffic from another operator, we first of all enquire with them to make sure it is not a technical issue or an issue that can be resolved easily such as a transmission link or switch being down or capacity being reached thus not allowing further connections or traffic. We also make sure that it is not a financial or a business related issue where the new service provider owed money before and did not pay and are now trying to come to us to send that same traffic. As long as it is not any of those two reasons, we then work to make sure that the link is up and is working. If we still continue to notice issues, we then take it to the NCC to intercede on the issue.

Connecting to Other Clearing Houses

We will like to think of ourselves as the biggest and the best clearing house though we are not the only clearing house so operators have the option of connecting to them if they want redundant links. A number of operators have direct links to each other but some of them also have redundant links between multiple clearing houses, which is good but at the same time even with the redundant links you will still use the most reliable one and the bigger one as your primary link. If for some reasons you have problems, you can fall back on the secondary link. We try to assure them that their links will be up, the traffic will be passed, and service quality would be at the best they can get. By this, they use us as their primary link but at the same time they have the option of connecting to other clearing houses or connecting directly to other operators and passing traffic that way as well.

How Prepared Are You for Number Portability?

We are fully prepared and our role as the integrator or those who are to implement number portability has started, whether working with our partners or other operators in the industry. We have started communicating with the network operators and with Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), we have ordered equipment, our facilities are upgraded, so we are very much ready and able to deliver within the timeline. If there are issues with some of the other players in fulfilling their roles that may also delay the rollout, these issues will be sorted out but as far as our responsibilities and those of our partners are concerned, we are definitely ready.

Postpaid Subscribers Porting before Month End

There is going to be an additional workshop regarding the business rules for number portability. NCC put out the business rules document about half a month ago for everybody to review and make comments on it. The business rules determine who is allowed to port, when they are allowed to port and what their restrictions are on porting. I cannot remember exactly what it says about post paid customers, but I know that they are allowed to port but then in some cases they may loose their balances if they have credits left on their accounts but they are still required to pay up the full amount even if they port over. There are some things that still need to be worked out between operators and the NCC on how it is going to work out. There would be allowances for postpaid or even prepaid customers to port back and forth, even if it is just to give them a timeline saying you can port before end of the month or before your billing cycle, but the operator cannot use that as a way to hold back customers from porting over. That is to say there is an allowance for postpaid customers to move over in the course of time.

Why Do You Think Interconnect Can Deliver?

We are partnering with the number one company in the world for number portability and we consider ourselves the number one company in Nigeria in interconnectivity which is a major requirement for number portability. With our history of work with all operators in Nigeria, we feel that we have the Nigerian knowledge and the qualifications for the local presence to provide number portability and with our partner, Telcordia that is a primary company as it relates to number portability around the world, we feel that together as a team we can definitely implement number portability. In all other countries Telcordia has provided number portability, they do so with a local partner that in most cases have never done it before and most of those partners do not even have the connections that we have at this time. We already have lots of infrastructure with the services that we interconnect, so adding on their knowledge and skills in number portability, we feel it is a more straight forward way and we can implement the service.

How Long Does the Porting Process Take?

The NCC requirement is that it should not take more than two days to port from one operator to the other and since most of the processes are automated, there should not be a problem with its being accomplished between those two days. The hardest part that you have to do is receive a SIM card from the operator after the process has been completed.

Envisaged Challenges

Our partners have done it in India; they have done it in other places that are not as straight forward as the UK or the United States, so they have some knowledge as far as the processes are concerned. Our duty is to gather information at the right time and from the right people to make sure we have the information we need to implement. On our part on the local side a lot of those challenges are being taken care of from our history in business.

However, we are doing a lot of communication with NCC and the operators informing them on regular basis on the steps and stages that we are. We have a project plan that says this day we are supposed to be here or there, this is the status of the plan, how far we have come, what have we accomplished? What problems are we facing?

Keeping the communication lines open between the stakeholders is an important thing that we are looking at and then our relationship with those other operators and other stakeholders is also very important. They have trust in us as they have done business with us for a while so it allows for things to go smoothly. Any time we have problems we can all meet together as stakeholders being the operators, ourselves as the implementation group and the NCC as the regulator to make sure that things are moving at the right pace.

Co-operation from Operators

We are getting cooperation from the operators but I will say education is key. Some operators do not want it to come while some operators want it to come just like any other thing out there, but the good thing is that NCC has said it is going to come. The key thing for us to do is to assist with the education of all Service providers who will be involved. Some may think that they will lose subscribers in this situation of number portability but there are ways to also gain subscribers from it. We are a neutral third party and we are not allowed to support any operator. . What we do is that we have general workshops and conferences with everybody, explain to them what the benefits of number portability are and how they can benefit from it. By such kind of education and support, it helps them know that Number Portability is to their advantage. Number Portability has been implemented within a short period of time in Ghana, South Africa and other places. It will not push anybody out of business but by education of the process and knowing the proper requirements, it will be implemented in a better way and the subscribers and operators will gain.