Professor Umar Garba Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, stated that masking of calls with another number, especially international calls has been trending since September 2016 when NCC reviewed the International Termination Rate (ITR) to N24.40.
Professor Danbatta, noted that there has been growing levels of call Masking and Refiling from October 2016 to June, 2017, following the implementation of the reviewed ITR to N 24.40.
The NCC boss further stated that realizing the implications of this phenomenon to the industry and security of the nation, the Commission has since taken drastic monitoring, compliance and enforcement measures and charged the Technical Standards and Network Integrity Department at the Commission to uncover the networks behind the crime.
The Commission in collaboration with different stakeholders and security agencies have had series of meetings which led to the suspension of six interconnect exchange licenses in 2017.
Director Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement, Efosa Idehen in his presentation to the Committee highlighted some of the actions put in place by the Commission to address issues of Call Masking, Call Refiling and Simboxing which include the following:
The Legal and Regulatory Services Department of the Commission has been charged to work on the issuance of Direction to MNOs’ to implore every technical means not to allow their networks to be used for Call Masking and SIM Boxing activities.
The Commission through the Public Affairs and Consumer Affairs Bureau Departments to use all available channels to deepen awareness on the NCC’s actions, get stakeholders buy-in and get as many MSISDN records for the Commission's further investigation and enforcement actions.
Keep Continuous compliance, monitoring and enforcement activities to detect victims of Call Masking and investigation of channels used to commit the illegality.
The Executive Commissioner Stakeholder Management, Sunday Dare in his remarks leading to the conclusion of the meeting stated that the Commission is driven by its mandate to protecting, informing and educating all telecom subscribers in Nigeria through various ways, and that sooner the Commission will fish out the culprits involved in this phenomenon of Call Masking, Refiling and SIM Boxing.