ISLAMABAD - The menace of grey trafficking in the country must be controlled at the earliest, Secretary Information Technology Kamran Ali Qureshi said Tuesday.
Chairing a meeting regarding monitoring of grey traffic under International Clearing House (ICH) arrangements, Secretary IT, Kamran Ali Qureshi welcomed the participants and apprised that grey traffic has increased considerably and measures should be taken for its control at the earliest.
Telephone companies in different countries use various telecoms routes to send traffic to each other. Grey route or grey traffic is one that falls outside the regular course of business between the licensed telecoms companies in each country.
Member Telecom apprised the participants that prior to establishment of International Clearing House Exchange, grey traffic were monitored by PTA.
Ministry of IT in its various policy directives had directed PTA from time to time to control grey traffic effectively but there was no proper compliance of its directives.
In fact the ICH policy was introduced by the previous Federal Government due to the inefficiency and incapacity of PTA to control grey traffic and procurement of monitoring equipment was to be made under the said policy.
Unfortunately PTA due to its internal lack of coordination and commitment did not implement ICH policy in its true letter and spirit.
Despite repeated instructions/reminders of MoIT equipment has neither been installed nor functioning.
A similar meeting chaired by Secretary IT was also convened two weeks ago at Ministry, in which all the stakeholders including PTA, LEA and ICH consortium participated.
Wherein, in order to remedy this fault it was mutually agreed in that meeting that monitoring equipment will be installed at ICH and its interface will be provided at a suitable place designed by MoIT for joint operation of PTA and security agencies under the supervision of Ministry of IT.
It was further agreed in the meeting that a committee, under the chairmanship of Additional Secretary (IT) will oversee the monitoring of operating system. The committee would comprise two representatives each from PTA, security agencies and MoIT. Upgradation of the system was also declared the responsibility of this committee.