News:
June 2, 2018
Minister for communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has given the telecommunications networks working in the country 11th June, 2018 to join the physical common platform on the floor of Parliament.
She noted that Vodafone and Glo are currently in the process of connecting physically to the Common Platform (CMP) and added that she expects others (MTN, Airtel & Tigo) to do so shortly.
“Their deadline for final connection is 11th June, 2018 and failure or refusal to do so will result in imposition of the specified sanctions” she said.
The Common Platform is necessary for monitoring International and domestic voice and data traffic, volumes, revenue and mobile money transactions in an independent way.
Among the benefits that will be derived from CMP, the Minister stated includes; the Common Platform will also conduct Mobile Money Monitoring in addition to Traffic Monitoring and Fraud Management. All the previous platforms did not have the capability of monitoring Mobile Money transactions.
This will enable government to have more visibility on the actual volumes and values of Mobile Money transactions not just for revenue assurance but also for anti-money laundering and anti-crime and terrorist financing.
If the previous platforms were to provide this additional service, it would have come at additional cost, meaning that the payments would have exceeded the $2.6 million previously paid monthly.
The platform will also have the capability to do SIM-box fraud tracking with a Geo-location system to pinpoint the exact location of fraudsters using SIM-box locators to enable their arrest and confiscation of equipment with the support of the operators and law enforcement officers.
The common platform will provide services to both the NCA and the GRA as envisaged by the Communication Service Tax (Amendment) Act, 2013, Act 864. When the Common Platform starts full operations, the cost of providing accurate data to both the NCA and GRA will be reduced significantly.
The cost savings will result in the NCA paying less than half of the amount it previously paid to Afriwave while GRA will also be paying approximately 60% of the average amount previously paid to Subah even with the addition of Mobile Money Monitoring. The cumulative savings on the monthly recurring cost to both the GRA and NCA is about 55% compared to what the two government agencies were previously paying.
By: Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/ghanamps.com