General News
Number Portability without Interconnect Houses’ll be Chaotic -Nnamani
Ikechukwu Nnamani, president/CEO of Medallion Communications Limited has made outstanding contributions to the development of the telecommunications industry in Nigeria. He played pivotal roles in deploying the telephony networks of Rainbownet Limited in the cities of Enugu, Aba, Owerri, Abakiliki, Onitsha, and Nsukka, as well as deployed networks for Megatech Engineering in Kano and Startech Networks in Abuja and has handled projects for Boeing Aerospace in St Louis, Missouri, as well as United States Navy Strategic Ballistic Missiles Defense Programme for which he was awarded a United States Navy plaque for outstanding work. In this interview with hilary okeke, Nnamani spoke on a range of issues around interconnect.
Use of Interconnect Houses by Telecom Operators
Yes, telecom operators are beginning to realize and really appreciate the value and importance of interconnect houses in the industry. At least in Lagos currently, Medallion is connected with pretty much all the operators available – GSM, CDMA and fixed lines – and we are getting patronage from each of them both in receiving and sending traffic from them to other operators.
Interconnect Houses and Billing Issues
From the beginning, the main reason why interconnect houses were created was to address these issues of interconnect indebtedness, reconciliation and settlement. It is an integral part of our service offering. In Medallion for instance, there are no disputes amongst operators connected on our network. The reason is simple – as an interconnect point, you generate an independent call records which would always be used for dispute resolution and arbitration. Also, you are able to differentiate and mediate on each type of traffic that comes through your network. So, because you have the right interconnect billing infrastructure, it is easier for you to handle billing and settlement; and these are infrastructures that some of the operators may not have. That is why you find one operator claiming that his infrastructure is better and more advanced than another’s, so whatever is coming from it should be accepted. We are able to bridge that gap. At least I can speak for Medallion as interconnect clearing house – today we have no disputes on our network.
Traffic Exchange Dynamics and Interconnect House
Operator A sends calls to operator B through the interconnect point, three call records are generated for each of the call. Operator A generates a call record, which he might start counting when the trunk is seized; operator B generates his own call records which he might start counting when the call is answered. So, you notice there is going to be a difference in timing from the point of origin and point of termination; a difference in the call records between the trunk time – when the trunk is seized – and the talk time – when you actually have conversations, which should be used for accurate billing of calls. What the clearing house does is reconcile both. On Medallion’s switch for instance, we generate both the trunk time and the talk time, and what is used for billing is talk time, not trunk time. We are able to differentiate both and show them to operators in case one of them says his own time is different – whereby he is probably assuming the trunk time for his billing. What you notice most is that as long as you do not have that independent record to fall back on, which is able to record the differences between the talk and trunk time; you are going to have disputes. So, that is one of the ways we have been able to resolve disputes considering that call records bear time of call, duration of call, the numbering plans for both originating and terminating operators. That would enable you to know that “this is an MTN call going to Zoom or Starcomms.” You should also be able to differentiate when someone is just flashing from when he is actually trying to make a call. Those short duration calls should not be counted, and we are able to separate all that through billing and reconciliation. That is how we are able to prevent disputes.
Clearing Houses’ Records Final?
Not necessarily. We would not want to put it in a militant way; we would rather say that a fact is a fact. As long as you have accurate information that you can prove is accurate, then parties are obliged to honour it. Again as I said, the beauty of calls going through an interconnect point is that you have three records – originating records, terminating records and the records from the clearing house. It is hardly possible for one to see these three records different from each other, and with Medallion’s kind of interconnect platform, it becomes a lot easier to demonstrate to all the parties that the records are accurate. That has been the experience on our network. I would not say that our position or record is final, only that historically, there has been no dispute around the records that we have generated and presented to operators.
Interconnect Houses and Number Portability
We have made a presentation to the regulators that without having efficient interconnect services; number portability is not going to work. It is simple – you need independent transparent entities to handle number portability, and in Nigeria today, it is interconnect operators that have that ability and capability because we already have the links to operators, and are independent, transparent and not in competition with any entity. We have no reason not to honour a request by a subscriber to move from one network to another. I say this not from the Medallion viewpoint but from the interconnect operator class of licence point of view – the industry would be much better, the implementation of number portability would be more efficient if it is handled through the interconnect operators who already have the infrastructure on ground and the ability to offer the service efficiently. Literally, it is no different from what we are already doing; it is pretty much going to be seen as an additional class of service within the existing class of service that we offer. So, interconnect operators are fully prepared to offer number portability and we truly hope to be able to make it a seamless transition for the industry if our service is fully embraced.
Number Portability without Interconnect Houses
It is going to be chaotic! Again, if you have pair-to-pair (when operator A directly connects to operator B), and a subscriber on operator A’s network sends him a request to be migrated to operator B’s network, chances are that that request would not be honoured because the operator would not want to lose his customers, and so will do all he can to stop that subscriber. Number portability is just not going to work unless you have independent bodies handling it; the request to be ported must be handled by an independent body that is not the operator whom the subscriber wants to move from. That is the best way it is going to work, otherwise you would see anti-competition taking over; it is just going to be inefficient, requests would be delayed and denied. Ultimately, the subscriber is going to be the one to suffer and he may not have the records. It would be the subscriber’s word against the operator’s. In other parts of the world, it is never the same operator that owns the subscriber, which handles the movement of the subscriber to another network – it is always handled by independent bodies.
Legal Issues around Interconnection
Interconnect is a regulatory requirement, it is mandatory that all operators interconnect among themselves. The major reason for this is anti-competition because the regulator wants to ensure that no one dominant operator in the industry holds others to ransom. So, there is simply a regulatory requirement that all operators must interconnect with one another; and for interconnect operators, that regulatory requirement is equally paramount. Once an interconnect operator demands for interconnect, the regulation requires that that request be honoured by the operator to whom the request is made. Going beyond the regulatory requirement and looking at it from the commercial angle; using the service of an interconnect operator has a lot benefits for a telecom operator. Even if there were no regulatory requirement, any smart operator would embrace it because it helps them to reduce the cost of their operation considering the number of interconnect links that need to be put in place; resolve issues around billing disputes and reconciliation, and issues of capacity for interconnect. Any operator that fails to embrace interconnect services fully lacks knowledge about how telecoms can function efficiently. Everyone is talking about infrastructure sharing – what an interconnect operator offers you is simply a means to share your interconnect infrastructure with others in a cost effective way. At the end of the day, your savings in cost could run into hundreds of millions of Naira.
Interconnect Houses and Emerging Mobile Currency Trend
Medallion is at the forefront of the promotion of mobile banking. We currently have a number of the mobile groups trying to work with us. For mobile banking to function properly, there must be a seamless interface between the banks and the operators and that kind of interface cannot be handled on a pair-to-pair basis. The interconnect operator makes it faster for mobile banking to be implemented across the various networks. We have been at the forefront of this and we try to promote it believing that it is one of the ways to bridge the divide between the banks and the telcos. We know that there are now more telecom subscribers than account holders in the banks. So, there is a huge market and opportunity here. It is also a global trend, and Nigeria cannot be left behind. There is a huge sector of the population that is still unbanked and this sector cannot afford banking services the way they are offered today. Mobile banking focuses on driving down the cost of providing services to be able to reach the unbanked. What a company like Medallion has done is to be very active in that space and put the necessary infrastructure in place to make it happen in a cost effective way for the banks, the operators and most importantly, the subscribers. We at Medallion just play the role of a platform provider to enable mobile banking. Without an interconnect house, it means that each of the banks and operators would set up a separate link to one another, and if you do the permutation, that would be a lot of links! You should also know that banks are not operators and vice versa, so somebody has to handle that interface between both of them to ensure that they ‘speak the same language.’ Interconnect operators are needed to provide accurate reconciliation, settlement and billing. Call records have to be generated and both parties have to be convinced that the dynamics of the transactions were handled accurately.
PalmPay, Nigeria’s leading digital banking platform, has renewed its commitment to deepening financial inclusion across the country. At the CeBIH Annual Conference 2025, themed “Reimagining Financial Inclusion through Cultural Shifts in Consumer Credit,” PalmPay’s Managing Director, Chika Nwosu, urged industry players to deepen financial inclusion by embracing community-aligned solutions and customer-centric innovations that can better serve Nigeria’s underserved and unbanked populations.
Speaking during a panel session titled “Social Inclusion, A Veritable Tool for Financial Inclusion,” Chika Nwosu joined other industry leaders to share insights on strengthening participation among women, rural dwellers, low-income earners, and other financially excluded groups.
Chika Nwosu highlighted PalmPay’s commitment to inclusive finance through its 500,000-strong agent network, which enables seamless cash-in/cash-out services for unbanked users across Nigeria. He also emphasised the importance of PalmPay’s USSD platform, 861#, which allows users with basic phones or limited internet access to perform essential financial transactions.
“Financial inclusion goes beyond access; it must be equitable and tailored to real-life needs,” Chika Nwosu said. He shared how PalmPay leverages behavioural insights to design impactful services, including affordable health insurance, reliable bill payments, merchant solutions, and automated savings features that support financial discipline among users.
The session further examined the role of grassroots agents and community touchpoints in driving last-mile adoption. Chika Nwosu noted that PalmPay’s widespread community presence continues to build trust and encourage excluded populations to embrace digital financial tools.
The session was moderated by Ronke Kuye of the CeBIH Advisory Council and featured representatives from E-Doc Online, SmartCash Payment Service Bank, SANEF, and EFINA.
PalmPay reaffirmed its commitment to driving accessible, secure, and inclusive financial services for all Nigerians. PalmPay is a leading digital banking platform driving financial inclusion and economic empowerment in underserved emerging markets. Through its secure, user-friendly, and inclusive suite of financial services, PalmPay empowers individuals and businesses with tools to manage and grow their money.
PalmPay offers a comprehensive range of products, including mobile payments, savings, and micro-insurance via its app and mobile money agent network.
Since launching in Nigeria in 2019 under a Mobile Money Operator license, the platform has grown to over 35 million app users. PalmPay has operations in Nigeria, Ghana, Tanzania, and Bangladesh.
Reality Defender and 1Kosmos have announced a strategic partnership that will see the deepfake detection firm integrate its real-time deepfake defenses into 1Kosmos’ blockchain-based biometric authentication platform.
Deepfake
A release says the integration enhances the platform’s existing PAD capabilities with new signals on both live and pre-recorded AI-generated image and video impersonations: “multimodal deepfake detection” that “enhances ISO/IEC 30107-3 PAD Level 2 performance to counter the growing share of synthetic-media attacks.”
“Deepfake attacks are evolving faster than most organizations can adapt, and detecting them requires specialized, continuously updated models,” says Ben Colman, CEO of Reality Defender. Reality Defender’s models keep pace with regulatory changes like the EU AI Act and upcoming ISO 25456 standards, to ensure seamless compliance.
“Advances in AI-generated impersonations are rewriting the rules of identity assurance and ratcheting up fraud losses,” says Mike Engle, chief strategy officer for 1Kosmos. “By adding Reality Defender as an embedded detection layer, we’re enabling enterprises to verify identity with greater certainty and stop AI-driven impersonation attacks before they result in financial loss, brand damage, or regulatory consequences.”
The product deploys without friction, integrating natively into existing 1Kosmos workflows, identity stacks, and user experiences with no new licenses, retraining or rearchitecture.
Resemble AI heads straight to market with new funding
Resemble AI has raised 13 million dollars in strategic funding to accelerate development on its voice generation and deepfake detection products. An announcement says the investment round includes Google’s AI Future Fund, Okta Ventures, Taiwania Capital, Gentree Fund, IAG Capital Partners, Berkeley Frontier Fund and KDDI – partnerships, the firm says, that “create immediate paths to market distribution and embed our technology within key identity and security ecosystems.”
The company says its deepfake detection model achieves 98 percent accuracy across more than 40 languages with multimodal threat detection across audio, video, images and text, and enhanced explainability for content analysis. It intends to use the investment to “fuel our global expansion and accelerate the development of our AI detection platform.”
FARx releases new multimodal deepfake detection tool
FARx, which bills itself as “the world’s only fused-biometrics company,” has announced the launch of FARx 2.0, its new generation of biometric software which fuses speaker, speech and face recognition for added capabilities in synthetic and cloned voice detection. The software can be integrated into browsers, apps and communication systems, and operates in the background to provide continuous multi-factor authentication without disruption.
A post on the firm’s LinkedIn page says FARx 2.0 “identifies not just what is being said but who is speaking, enabling it to detect and block attempts to spoof someone’s identity using synthetic voices, deepfakes, or cloned audio and video.” Trained on some 55,000 synthetic voices from real telephony environments, it can “reliably distinguish between real and AI-generated voices.”
The Malvern Gazette quotes Clive Summerfield, CEO of the Worcestershire, UK-based firm, who says the new product aims to deliver “an even more sophisticated, flexible biometric multi-factor authentication technology to users across a broad range of industries and applications.”
“Legacy voice biometrics and traditional MFA systems are simply no longer enough to outsmart the new era of AI-powered threats.”
The launch follows a recent investment of 250,000 pounds (about US$337,00) through the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS).
Grant funds deepfake tool tailored to South Korea, Singapore
A team from Singapore Management University (SMU) has won a grant to develop a deepfake detection tool. A release says the project will be “the first multilingual deepfake data set that includes dialectal variants such as Singlish and Korean dialects.”
“Many existing tools don’t perform well on Asian languages, accents, or content,” says Professor He Shengfeng, who leads the team. “We’re focused on building something that fits the specific needs of our region.”
Understanding different linguistic, socio-cultural and environmental characteristics was a key requirement for the grant, which comes from AI Singapore (AISG) and South Korea’s Institute for Information & Communication Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP).
The team has dubbed its tool DeepShield, which its proposal paper calls “the first unified interpretable detection system capable of handling diverse and multi-modal manipulations – including object insertions, lighting alterations, background swaps, and voice dubbing – within a single, explainable pipeline.”
Overall, DeepShield wants to position itself as “not merely a detection tool, but a next-generation AI governance layer for digital media integrity – setting it apart from commercial offerings in both ambition and design.” The ultimate goal is a spin-off startup that He imagines licensing services such as deepfake forensics, media authenticity verification, enterprise compliance and digital governance to public and private enterprise.
Work commences in January 2026 with the scouring of large-scale, publicly available datasets such as the YouTube8M dataset.
Ant International’s winning deepfake detector looks to eliminate bias
Ant International has won first place at the NeurIPS Competition of Fairness in AI Face Detection. A release from the company says its entry trumped over 2,100 submissions from 162 teams globally.
The deepfake detection contest challenged participants to develop AI models that “not only achieve high-utility performance but also demonstrate fairness across demographic subgroups such as gender, age, and skin tone.”
“A biased AI is an insecure AI,” says Dr. Tianyi Zhang, general manager of risk management and cybersecurity at Ant International. “Our model’s fairness prevents exploitation from deepfakes and ensures reliable identity verification for all users, supporting our mission to deliver secure and inclusive financial services worldwide.”
The Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) is set to develop a comprehensive security master plan for tertiary institutions nationwide.
The Chairman of the Board of Trustees (BoT), TETFund, Aminu Bello Masari, made this known during his remark at the opening ceremony of a two-day workshop on campus security towards the development of a security master plan for tertiary institutions in Nigeria, held in Abuja.
He outlined the various threats faced by tertiary institutions, including banditry, kidnapping and cyber intrusions.
Masari explained that the master plan aims to enhance threat prevention, detection and response capabilities.
According to him, the discussion at the workshop, which was attended by all the chief security officers of all tertiary institutions, will cover various aspects of campus security, including intelligence gathering and emergency response mechanisms.
He stressed the shared responsibility of campus security among government, security agencies, administrators, students, staff and communities.
The workshop is described as a critical national document that will shape campus security policies and operations.
He encouraged participants to approach the deliberations with dedication, innovation and practical solutions, adding that outcomes of the workshop will significantly impact the safety of campuses and the future of Nigerian tertiary education.
The participants, including chief executives, deans, security officers, and law enforcement representatives, were encouraged to share experiences and practical solutions to ensure robust, future-proof campus security.
“What we begin here today is not merely another conference. It is a foundational step in developing a comprehensive, forward looking security master plan for tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
“This master plan is expected to establish a security of time framework for all time sharing institutions to transcend institutional capacity for threat prevention, detection, mitigation and response, promote intelligence-led security operations and proactive risk management, protect students, staff, facilities, infrastructure and intellectual assets, deepen collaboration between institutions, security agencies and host communities institutionalized emergency preparedness, crisis management and business continuity protocols and integrate modern, physical and digital security technologies into campus operation.
“These deliberations are not theoretical. They form the building blocks of the national framework that will guide campus security policies, investments and operations for years to come. I am particularly encouraged by this diversity of participants. Present here are chief executives, Dean of Student Affairs, chief security officers, ICT professionals, security analysts and the representatives of law enforcement agencies,” he stated.
In his remarks, the Executive Secretary, TETFund, Sunny Echono, pointed out that some campuses are porous and easily invaded, making them attractive targets for criminals.
He recalled a previous mapping exercise to identify high-risk areas and establish emergency response mechanisms.
He said there is a need to interface with various agencies and units in case of a security breach, ensuring clear communication channels.
Echono stressed the importance of having clear communication channels to alert and respond to security breaches, involving agencies like the military, police and Civil Defence.
“Those high-risk areas we identified and see how you can have some emergency response mechanism. This is only the first layer that is there, at the security layer at the source. Naturally, you know you have to interface with so many other agencies and units in the events of such an occurrence,” he said.
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