Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Communication Albert Abongo says safeguarding the role played by communications technology service provider Subah Infolsolutions Limited, in monitoring revenue due government from the mobile telecom operators, is very crucial to national development.
Mr. Abongo, who is also MP for Bongo, told journalists after a tour of selected data centres of mobile operators in Accra, that it is important for government to establish its independent verification of taxes the operators are supposed to pay.
Friday’s tour saw members of Parliament’s Select Committee on Communication and some media personnel inspect Subah’s installations at some key telecom operators’ data centres in Accra.
“As part of our responsibility as a committee of parliament to oversee the communications sector, we decided to inspect Subah’s infrastructure at the premises of the various telecoms companies...
“We were able to ascertain for ourselves the infrastructure Subah has put in place to monitor revenue...we were quite impressed by the company’s installations, which will help provide real-time monitoring of revenue due government,” he said.
According to Mr. Abongo, although the committee is pleased by the advanced solutions employed by Subah, it will nevertheless engage service of the National Communications Authority (NCA) to vet the technical specifications of Subah’s gadgets.
“We will rely on the NCA to ascertain the veracity of Subah’s gadgets, since they have the technical means to verify the company’s mode of operations. Nevertheless, we are convinced by the work they do,” he said.
Subah, contracted by the Ghana Revenue Authority in 2010 to provide telecom traffic monitoring services for the tax agency, boasts state-of-the-art communication technology solutions which it has deployed to assist in its operations.
Managing Director of Subah, Biren Sasmal, recently told B&FT its rigorous monitoring and audit system enables tax authorities to accelerate tax collection, while revenue accruing from the international gateway has increased into double-digits.
“In terms of international gateway monitoring, over the past few years Subah has been able to boost revenues generated through this avenue exponentially. This falls within our mandate, and we are delivering on that promise,” he said.
Efforts at boosting revenue
Mr. Sasmal, revealed that the IT solutions company is teaming up with authorities in over 170 countries to fight the operations of SIMBox fraudsters, which are a drain on government revenues as well as the telecom operators.
According to him, Subah has installed its ports in over 170 countries through its clients and partners who grant it access regarding where calls are generated from, whether these calls go through the legal routes or by-pass them.
The international collaboration has become very relevant considering that these fraudsters are aided by counterparts mostly in countries where the calls come from, which are illegally terminated in Ghana.
“Together with our state of the art technologies, we get to know which calls are legitimate and which ones are not; with our triangulation technology, we are able to narrow down on the fraudsters to swoop in on them,” he said.
Telecom companies and government are estimated to have lost over US$65.5million to SIMBox fraudsters in just seven months this year, a figure that is believed would have been much more without the involvement of Subah.
Although Mr. Sasmal concedes that the SIMBox technology is always advancing, he added that Subah has always upgraded its technologies for detecting operations of the fraudsters, hence the recent arrests made at Tema.
<<Print>>