PTA fights grey trafficking, raids four illegal telecom gateways

Monitoring tool automatically blocks IPs to curb menace.

KARACHI: As part of its ongoing drive against illegal telecom gateways responsible for grey telephony, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) raided four illegal Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) exchanges in Gujrat on Friday.

The PTA’s zonal office in Lahore, along with Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), raided the illegal telecom gateways and confiscated their equipment in a joint raid, according to a press release.

The aforesaid raid is the latest in a series of similar raids that are part of an aggressive campaign that PTA has been running since October, 2013 – when the telecom sector’s regulatory body deployed a grey traffic monitoring equipment to curb the menace of illegal call centers and gateways that cost over Rs3.5 billion a year in losses to the national exchequer.

The newly acquired system has the capability to automatically block the IPs of telecom gateways, which are not in the PTA’s white list – a list of IP addresses, which are clear and not involved in any suspicious activity. The system also helps PTA remotely detect irregular traffic patterns for telecom exchanges and the information is then used by the PTA and FIA to investigate further and conduct on-ground raids.

Besides conducting raids and blocking IPs of suspicious gateway exchanges, the telecom regulator is also running a public awareness campaign to educate masses about grey traffic and how the latter can help the PTA fight the menace.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 29^th, 2014.

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