what is grey trafficking , and how it works?

What is White, Black and Grey Traffic?

Telephone companies in different countries use a variety of International telecom routes to send traffic to each other, These can be White, Grey or Black.

what is White Trafficking?

White is, in the telecommunications business, is a route in which both source and destination are legal termination. Black route which is a route that is illegal in both ends while the Grey route which defines a route that is legal for one country or the party on one end, but illegal on the alternative end.

what is Black and Grey Trafficking?

black route, which is a route that is illegal in both ends. Also common in telecom (especially VoIP) is the term grey route, which defines a route that is legal for one country or the party on one end, but illegal on the alternative end.

Why Black and Grey Trafficking is illegal?

For those who do not know, grey traffic is smuggling-in of international calls, measured in minutes, through channels other than licensed. It not only means national wealth going into pockets of smugglers, make no mistake, grey traffic is also a threat to national security as a call coming through the grey channel may be nearly impossible to trace back. What is more alarming is that in Pakistan grey traffic is on the rise.

So, come to the main reason why the Grey Traffic is highlighted in the post is that It is a type of corruption happening in Pakistan, which causes loss more than 1 billion dollar yearly.

According to committee, PTA does not have the capability to monitor the incoming and outgoing calls traffic which is causing a loss of $ 1 billion per annum. PTA is only capableof monitoring 13% of the traffic, the committee learnt.

Recently PTA ( Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ) Taken serious action against Grey Traffic and Started Toll Free number and SMS to report such cases in Pakistan, In this screenshot you can see clearly the Numbers where to report, free of cost.

How to stop grey traffic?

One proposal to stop grey traffic is to offer the last-mile operators (mainly mobile) a share from ICH revenues. The argument is that since the grey calls are connected to end-subscribers by these operators – the reason why we see local numbers in case of international calls – giving them a share would make them curb grey traffic. But this would neither make calls to Pakistan cheaper, nor would it remove the incentive to smuggle.

As long as there is premium in ASR, grey traffic will flourish, as we have seen above, the more the premium, the more the grey traffic. Therefore, it is the premium in ASR that needs to be eliminated.

It is estimated that it costs grey traffickers between 2 and 2.5 cents per smuggled minute, which means an ASR of around 3 cents will significantly reduce the incentive to smuggle.

If one assumes the international incoming minutes to be 1.5 billion, and ASR is set at 3 cents, the result would be $45 million per month ($4 million higher than last month’s actual).

Reducing ASR involves two steps:

a) Do away with ‘APC for USF’, at least for the present. USF has enough, even if the money is now with the government. In any case, the USF contribution (1.5% of operators’ revenues) would still keep adding to the fund.

b) Do away with guaranteed share of LDIs – presently nearly 6 cents per minute. Let there be real competition where the operators earn whatever they can.