Accra, April 6, GNA - Government is determined to eliminate fraudulent practices where mobile phone companies terminate foreign calls received on handsets as local ones, Minister of Communication Haruna Iddrisu said in Accra on Tuesday.

The calls are received on the handsets beginning with codes such as 020; 054; 026; 027, the Minister said.

"We should all resolve to give the National Communications Authority (NCA) the needed support to build institutional capacity to check the incidences of fraud perpetrated through by-pass and unauthorised routing", Mr. Iddrisu said.

He said the initial fraud campaign report produced by the NCA's Network Operation Centre between March 1-22, this year detected 2,815 fraudulent numbers (using illegal SIMs), depriving the government of an estimated revenue of over two million dollars.

The Minister said the NCA had commenced a real-time ascertainment of the country's inbound international telephone traffic to promote transparency in the management of the international gateway infrastructure and to protect licensed holders from fraudulent by-pass and re-filling of international calls.

The move, he said, would increase the flow of revenue from international call termination to both operators and the government. Government expects to raise between 50 million dollars and 60 million dollars annually from the initiative.

The Minister announced a directive for the NCA to withdraw unutilised licences of frequency and spectrum allocations that had been assigned and were not being used in the last three years.

These would revert to the state for re-allocation to communities that are underserved, Mr. Iddrisu said.

On the implementation of Mobile Number Portability, the Minister said NCA was working with telecom industry players to define the technical details for the smooth take-off of the programme in 2011. Testing of equipment would commence in June this year. Mr. Iddrisu said Mobile Number Portability would encourage healthy operator competition as well as offer consumer choice of service in a competitive market environment.

"The right of movement will hopefully compel networks to enhance their level of service or lose the 'consumer-cedi vote' as they move to networks that provide greater value for money", he said.

To support the Internet's development, the Ministry has further granted approval to the NCA to prepare guidelines for the auctioning of licences in the 2.5GHz-2.69GHz frequency band to provide wireless nationwide broadband connectivity to subscribers excluding voice applications.

This spectrum band is suitable for the use of WiMAX derived and other advanced technologies for the delivery of fixed broadband internet. Mr. Iddrisu announced the construction of a national data centre to which the national portal would be linked in efforts to protect vital national information, following recent spate of fire outbreaks. The draft project design and other works procurement deliverables have been delivered to the project consultants while services of Huawei Technologies has been procured for the provision of technical equipment for the national data centre.

The Minister said the foundation stone for the project would be laid before July this year.