Parliament passes Bill to set up Interconnect Clearinghouse
Parliament has unanimously passed the Electronic Communications (Amendment) Bill, 2016 into law to give legal backing to the operation of the Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH).
By the passage of the Bill into law, the Electronic Communication Act, 2008 (Act 775) has been amended to legalize the establishment the ICH as the only way for telecom networks to interconnect with each other.
The primary objectives for the introduction of an ICh are to assure cost effectiveness in interconnection, reduce the cost of interconnection and facilitate interconnection for emerging service and application providers and thereby make service delivery affordable to subscribers.
Earlier before the passage of the bill, the Minister for Communications, Mr Edward Omane Boamah, who moved the motion for the second reading said the amendment was necessary because the current Electronic Communication Act did not provide the legal backing for an ICh to be implemented within the telecommunication sector in a manner that would be mandatory.
He said government in 2014 approved four policies namely the establishment of an ICh system for regulation of telecommunications, the introduction of an International Wholesale Carrier License which in itself would be dependent on the ICh, the implementation of a Unified Access Service License with early renewal of labour telecom licenses, and the introduction of a Virtual Mobile Network Operation License
“This amendment Bill is, however, dealing specifically with the ICh and the others will depend on it,” he said.
Benefits of the ICh
Mr Omane Boamah mentioned that value added service providers had demonstrated clearly that they would have a sanitised environment dealing with the ICh instead of dealing with multiple mobile network operators.
He said that would help them acquire and monitor the data on sales and uses of their services and would also enable them know clearly how much was due them and what improvements they needed to make to their goods and services.
The Joint Committee on Communications and Finance also in their report observed that, when fully implemented, the Interconnect Clearinghouse operators would among other things provide an efficient billing and payment settlement process with a verifiable call detail record.
It would also provide a reliable, efficient and scalable network that would lead to the reduction of cases that require mediation by the NCA.
The Chairman of the Communication Committee, Mr Ibrahim Ahmed, who read the joint committee’s report, also stated that the ICh would provide cheaper service delivery to subscribers as a result of the gains made when the cost of doing business was passed on to the subscriber in the form of lower tariffs.
He said it would also operate a common platform to monitor traffic volumes in the country, operate the centralised subscriber identity registry and provide a common infrastructure for government agencies to host information communication technology systems and applications and store confidential data.
Mr Ahmed also pointed out that the use of the ICh would generate the much needed revenue for the government through a number of ways and drastically reduce revenue lost to the state.
“The ICh will, for instance, contribute to reducing the diversion of revenue through simboxing, and ensure effective active detection of simbox fraud which has plagued the communications industry and resulted in huge losses of revenue to the government,’ he explained.
Debate
The Member of Parliament for New Juaben South, Mr Mark Assibey-Yeboah, who was also part of the joint committee called for the removal of part of the report which said the ICh was going to increase government’s revenue.
He said the only government agency which could inform the house about the revenue implications of setting up the ICh should be the Ghana Revenue Authority and by extension the Ministry of Finance.
He said, however, that the finance minister, his two deputies and the Commissioner of the Ghana Revenue Authority all failed to appear before the committee and the staff of the agencies who represented them when asked about the revenue implication said they could not tell.
“They explained that it was a new regime and until it starts operation, they could not tell that there is going to be an increase in revenue or not. I, therefore, do not see why somebody in the committee should smuggle it in that there was going to be an increase in revenue,” he stated.
The Member of Parliament for Obuasi West, Mr Kwaku-Agyemang Kwarteng, also said there was the need to put in place proper measures to regulate the proposed ICh.
He said the stakeholders who appeared before the committee did not come to a consensus because while others endorsed it, the telecommunication service providers were against it.
He said the telecommunication service providers were against it because interconnection was part of their technical business.
“They owe it to their subscribers to deliver a particular quality of service and they could not guarantee that a clearing house will be able to do that. If we are going to have an ICh which will do what the private companies are doing for themselves, then there must be proper regulation on how it will operate in order to allay the fears of the service providers,” he added.