The withdrawal of International Clearing House (ICH) regime and de-regulating call rates resulted in significant decline in grey trafficking, as white traffic reached to over 1.1 billion minutes per month in June 2015 against 367 million recorded in November 2014, it is learnt. Official sources at the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) told Business Recorder that the number of legal traffic has increased from around 450 million minutes in February 2015 to over 1.1 billion minutes in June 2015.
The officials further said that when calling rates were 8.8 US cents per minute the total reported traffic was around 450 million minutes per month despite of best efforts of the PTA and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) to conduct raids and block thousands of SIMs.
The traffic has now increased to over a billion minutes per month since the rates have been deregulated after ICH was abolished. Grey traffic has witnessed significant reduction during this period. According to the data made available to Business Recorder, during the year 2014-2015 a total of 188 raids were conducted. During the raids conducted in different areas of the country 164 persons including seven foreigners were apprehended and 706 gateways were confiscated.
The officials maintained that the ICH regime had caused a loss of 44.4 billion international call minutes to the telecom sector of Pakistan, which resulted in loss of about Rs 400 billion in 13 months time. However, according to the sources, it is next to impossible to reach the pre-ICH regime of two billion white minutes as about 500 million call minutes has shifted to OTT services (Skype, tango, viber etc) and may be hard to recover. Thus, the legal traffic is expected to stabilize at around 1.5 billion minutes per month.
ICH regime, a consortium of Long Distance International (LDI) operators formed to terminate all international traffic through a single gateway exchange, eliminating competition from the market was introduced by the previous government in August 2012 (ICH Directive), upon active lobbying of some LDI operators. Under the ICH regime, rate for international call termination was fixed at 8.8 US cent per month. Thus call rates for calling to Pakistan from abroad increased manifold leading to unprecedented rise in grey traffic and pushed consumers towards over the top (OTT) services which were never the first choice for consumers before ICH.
The Prime Minister of Pakistan had constituted a high level of Steering Committee, which after extensive meetings with the stakeholders concluded ICH regime to be the main cause behind increase in grey traffic. Finally, ICH Policy was withdrawn by the Ministry of IT on the recommendations of PTA vide a revised policy directive dated 17.06.2014 to take effect from 01.08.2014.
The withdrawal of ICH Policy was challenged by some LDI operators having vested interest through a well orchestrated scheme. Initially four LDI operators approached the Sindh High Court and obtained an ex parte stay order against withdrawal of ICH regime.
By the time government filed replies, another LDI operator approached the Sindh High Court through another civil suit and obtained another ex parte stay order followed by three more cases filed in Sindh High Court. The government successfully defended these cases in Sindh High Court leading to their withdrawal or dismissal by the court.
However, these LDI operators challenged the order of the Sindh High Court vacating stay granted to them and while the arguments before Sindh High Court were at final stage, another LDI operator approached Lahore High Court and obtained yet another ex parte stay order on 04.12.2014 which was extended on successive dates of hearings.
Observing the secret plans of some of LDI operators abusing process of law, government invoked the Appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court against the stay orders issued by the Lahore High Court and Sindh High Court. The Supreme Court set aside the stay orders on 24.02.2015 while observing that the ICH regime was causing unjust enrichment of the LDI operators at the cost of telecom consumers.
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