The Ministry of Communications says the installation of servers at the various data centres of mobile networks for the implementation of the revenue monitoring Common Platform has been completed.
The Minister of Communications, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, gave a June 11, 2018, deal for all telcos to connect to Kelni GVG, a private company, to monitor call traffic.
A statement issued and signed by the Mrs Owusu-Ekuful on Monday said the MNOs have complied with the directive and what is to follow is testing and transmission, which are at various stages of completion.
“… Following a meeting with MNO Chief Executive Officers, I am happy to announce that they are all cooperating with the NCA, Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and their contractors to implement the CMP,” the statement said.
The statement noted, however, that some changes have been made to the original technical specifications of the servers to address the privacy concerns raised by the mobile network operators.
“A filtering server and mirroring installation have been included to ensure that only the signalling information needed for the purposes of traffic monitoring will be received by the NCA and GRA. No other information -either voice, SMS, video or data, will be received by KelniGVG servers.”
The controversy
Policy think tank, IMANI Africa, and other civil society organisations have waged a relentless crusade against the Kelni GVG contract, describing it as needless and overpriced.
The opposers claim that the government did not do any value for money audit before awarding the contract, with the hope of exposing telecom operators which, it suspected, to be unfaithful with the traffic and revenue figures.
But Mrs Owusu-Ekuful has defended the contract with Kelni GVG, arguing forcefully that it was in compliance with the Communication Service (Amendment) Act passed in 2013.
In order to enforce the monitoring regime, a new law, the Communication Service Tax Amendment Act was passed in 2013.
The law, among other things, is to “establish a monitoring mechanism to verify the actual revenue that accrues to vendors for the purpose of computing taxes due the government under this act and be given physical access to the physical network nodes of the vendors' network at an equivalent point in the network where the network providers' billing systems are connected”.
Source: Graphic.com
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Both the minister and her deputy have worked with this telcos and this telcos and they know ( what and why ) we need it.
Papa Osei, you hit the nail right where you have to. Been wondering why Franklin has been out to ditch the Kelni GVG agreement with the Communications Ministry. No matter how you explain it to him. He still thinks it’s wrong. Although he’s entitled to his opinion, the fact is he’s wrong and to make it worse for him, the little opportunity he gets Kelni GVG concludes all his presentation like being on the payroll of the Telcos. Was surprised at his posture on Citi TV when he appeared with the deputy Minister of Communications . Behaving like a toddler whose toy has been taken from him. Please grow up.
Mr. Cudjoe for your information Ghana is democratic Country at least in the 4th Republic. That is why you can freely express your views without being put in the jail-no era of silence. You have written strongly against the Kelni-GVG contract and both the Minister of communication and her Deputy have come out confidently and not without convincing arguments to refute your claims and even offered you the opportunity for consultation and clarification. Therefore, your self- assertion of reducing a legitimate, democratically elected functional Government to that of Cartel Republic is mere polemic and populistic claims. One thing which struck me most reading through your last piece was the desperate attempt of Mr. Cudjoe to discredit the Ministry of communication at all costs. Which is not IMANI-like. After all two citizens are trying in court in terms of connectivity of the system inflicting their right to privacy. Unlike cartel Republic, Mr. Cudjoe has so many chances to trigger an investigation to prove his case. Please do not let us loosely bastardize everything as corrupt when it doesn't necessarily border on corruption. After all, the stakeholders are cooperating, at the end of the day best practices are adopted and Ghana benefits.