STAFF REPORT LHR: The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has successfully blocked hundreds of servers and gateways of international carriers involved in sending illegal or grey telephony calls to grey operators in Pakistan during Eid days.
“The action has saved the government from suffering a multi-million dollar loss by detecting grey telephony during the Eid days,” said an official of the telecom authority.
He said this was done despite lack of resources and some technical problems faced by the Authority substantial grey traffic was checked during Eid days.
The volume of international calls coming to Pakistan substantially increase on Eid days and also important for the grey operators as well.
Another hindering factor is the government negligence in not investing on the improvement of technical facilities deployed to control the illegal call termination and monitoring of traffic, despite the implementation of International Clearing House (ICH). However, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Information and Technology said that it has been auditing Rs 270 million the amount given for the installation of equipment to check grey telephony. He added that so far no equipment has been installed in the PTA headquarters for this purpose. Once the equipment is installed the ministry will release the agreed resources.