ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA), in its efforts to curb grey trafficking, has conducted more than 65 raids in various cities during last one year.
The raids were conducted in collaboration with Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) against grey trafficking as this menace has been a constant nuisance for the government. It deprives national exchequer of billions of rupees every year.
PTA’s latest report on telecom sector on Sunday revealed that during the period under review, PTA and FIA jointly raided against illegal exchanges in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, Rawalpindi Faisalabad, Hyderabad, Multan, Gujrat, Jhang, Wah Cantt, Kasur, Toba Tek Singh, Chaman, Lower Dir, Bhakkar, Fateh Jhang and Larkana.
The successful raids also resulted in arrest of 57 persons besides confiscation of 250 illegal gateway equipment.
In another mode of eradicating menace of illegal call termination, PTA regularly identifies mobile SIMs being used in termination of grey traffic in the country.
In this connection, over one million mobile numbers have been identified terminating grey traffic and subsequently blocked.
PTA remained determined to tackle this issue by introducing a number of important measures over the years.
Some of them include Monitoring and Reconciliation of International Telephony Traffic (M&RITT) system, heavy caller analysis, monitoring of IP bandwidth and raids against illegal exchanges in all parts of the country.
PTA has also deregulated Long Distance International (LDI) sector by driving the Access Promotion Contribution (APC) charges down to zero and deregulating Approved Settlement Rate (ASR).
This significant step is a key factor in mitigating illegal traffic termination and helps in diverting more international traffic through legal channels into Pakistan.
