Airtel Ghana said on Wednesday that it was introducing a short code, 919, for customers in order to get them to report SIM Box fraud. The move is also aimed at pushing the country's regulator to curb the rising number of telecom infractions in the country. Airtel said in a press statement that they hope that through the new effort, those illegally using their services will face penalties over using the Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and that the government will intervene to ensure termination of the calls. Fraudsters are using the VOIP boxes to make international calls, which show up as local calls, meaning they are avoiding international call charges, the company said. “The caller is often not aware of the activities of these cyber fraudsters which result in the loss of revenue to the state. This illegal activity is an issue of concern to Airtel-Ghana, the Ministry of Communication (MoC) and the National Communications Authority (NCA), since the revenue loss affects the nation's financial basket as well,” Airtel Ghana said. In a statement published on Wednesday, Managing Director of Airtel Ghana Philip Sowah said, “Airtel Ghana has deployed state-of-the-art systems at very high costs to actively detect SIM box on a real time basis to enable us block these numbers the moment we detect them on our network.” According to Sowah, Airtel Ghana in working with other telecom operators provide information to the security agencies, the NCA and the MoC to assist in “arresting these criminals from their hideout.” BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/UAuKf Tags: Airtel, Fraud, Ghana, SIM Section: Tech, West Africa
