...stakeholders call for an amendment
By Kofi Ahovi
Stakeholders in the telecom industry are appealing to the government to consider reverting the law mandating telecommunications companies to charge 19 cents for incoming international calls.
The stakeholders believe this would discourage the activities of SIM Box fraudsters.
Under the law the telcos are expected to pay 6 cent out of the 19 cent to the government. Currently, both the government and the telcos are losing revenue due to the activities of these SIM Box fraudsters.
SIM Box fraud is a system by which some persons re-route international calls coming to Ghana through some boxes in which they have inserted local SIM cards, and they terminate the calls using those SIM cards, to make the call appear as a local call.
This business is particularly growing because the perpetrators are able to negotiate lower rates other than the 19 cents with the international carriers and only pays about 4 cents to the telcos by terminating the calls through their network. This implies that government loses its expected 6 cents.
According to the stakeholders, if the law is amended and the telcos charge their own competitive rates, the SIM Box business would be unprofitable.
The Head of External Affairs -Vodafone Ghana, Gayheart Mensah, agrees to this proposal and hinted that there is no SIM Box activity in Nigeria because there is no fixed rate for incoming international calls.
All telcos have international gateway through which they bring in international traffic for each other. But to ensure a level playing field, the law says no one can charge less than 19 cents per minute.
SIM registration was touted as a mechanism to eliminate SIM Box fraud, but all SIM cards being used by the fraudsters are registered. Hence the government has to look at alternative way of curtailing the activities.
The government introduced the law as a move is to enable government raise additional revenue from communication services provided by telecom operators to their customers. This was contained in the Communication Service Tax (Amendment) Bill which was sent to Parliament.
The general purpose of the Bill is to amend some provisions in the Communications Service Tax Act, 2008 (Act754) to clarify the scope and coverage of the Tax and to include interconnection services within the tax base. According to a report by the Committee on Finance, the move forms part of efforts by government to address some challenges among telecom companies in respect to the application of the tax to interconnection services.
The Communication Service Act, 2008 (Act 754), was passed in 2008 to impose a 6 per cent charge on communications service usage. The 6 per cent was arrived at in order to remove the surging nature of the tax with regards to interconnection services.
SIM Box fraud has been a major plague. But it has become very obvious that very often there are fraudsters who scoop revenue from both telcos and the state through SIM Box fraud. There is however unconfirmed suspicion that some telcos actually engage in SIM Box fraud just to avoid paying appropriate taxes on international traffic to the state. But there is a different between SIM Box fraud and what some telcos are allegedly doing to undercut other telcos on the international front.
By Kofi Ahovi
Stakeholders in the telecom industry are appealing to the government to consider reverting the law mandating telecommunications companies to charge 19 cents for incoming international calls.
The stakeholders believe this would discourage the activities of SIM Box fraudsters.
Under the law the telcos are expected to pay 6 cent out of the 19 cent to the government. Currently, both the government and the telcos are losing revenue due to the activities of these SIM Box fraudsters.
SIM Box fraud is a system by which some persons re-route international calls coming to Ghana through some boxes in which they have inserted local SIM cards, and they terminate the calls using those SIM cards, to make the call appear as a local call.
This business is particularly growing because the perpetrators are able to negotiate lower rates other than the 19 cents with the international carriers and only pays about 4 cents to the telcos by terminating the calls through their network. This implies that government loses its expected 6 cents.
According to the stakeholders, if the law is amended and the telcos charge their own competitive rates, the SIM Box business would be unprofitable.
The Head of External Affairs -Vodafone Ghana, Gayheart Mensah, agrees to this proposal and hinted that there is no SIM Box activity in Nigeria because there is no fixed rate for incoming international calls.
All telcos have international gateway through which they bring in international traffic for each other. But to ensure a level playing field, the law says no one can charge less than 19 cents per minute.
SIM registration was touted as a mechanism to eliminate SIM Box fraud, but all SIM cards being used by the fraudsters are registered. Hence the government has to look at alternative way of curtailing the activities.
The government introduced the law as a move is to enable government raise additional revenue from communication services provided by telecom operators to their customers. This was contained in the Communication Service Tax (Amendment) Bill which was sent to Parliament.
The general purpose of the Bill is to amend some provisions in the Communications Service Tax Act, 2008 (Act754) to clarify the scope and coverage of the Tax and to include interconnection services within the tax base. According to a report by the Committee on Finance, the move forms part of efforts by government to address some challenges among telecom companies in respect to the application of the tax to interconnection services.
The Communication Service Act, 2008 (Act 754), was passed in 2008 to impose a 6 per cent charge on communications service usage. The 6 per cent was arrived at in order to remove the surging nature of the tax with regards to interconnection services.
SIM Box fraud has been a major plague. But it has become very obvious that very often there are fraudsters who scoop revenue from both telcos and the state through SIM Box fraud. There is however unconfirmed suspicion that some telcos actually engage in SIM Box fraud just to avoid paying appropriate taxes on international traffic to the state. But there is a different between SIM Box fraud and what some telcos are allegedly doing to undercut other telcos on the international front.
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