MoIT Fights to Curb Grey Traffic

 

MoIT Fights to Curb Grey Traffic

Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications (MoIT) is in process of developing an operating system to curb grey traffic and provide effective solutions for reducing revenue loss.

The system will consist of four major building blocks whose purpose will be to collect data, analyse it, report in a meaningful format and use the results to monitor the traffic.
The system will be installed at the Pakistan Internet Exchange (PIE). National ICT Research and Development Fund a subsidiary of the ministry is executing the project in collaboration with Comsats Institute of IT (CIIT), Islamabad at the cost of Rs.13.51 million.

Officials on Sunday said the project called the Automatic Monitoring and Detection System (AMDS) for grey traffic is being executed in two phases. In the first phase, training will be provided and then a real-time system will be installed at PIE. The process will begin at the CIIT campus, after which the project will proceed towards step two when the system will be installed.

After the installation, it will be tested in a real-time environment before being properly launched.

Grey routes can be identified in terminating networks. Normally, heavy load in certain network areas or short voice calls or incomplete call information indicates grey traffic.
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) defines grey telephony as use of illegal gateway exchanges to bypass legal PTCL gateways and terminate/originate international traffic, including through VoIP gateways, GSM gateways, WLL phones, mobile SIMs or other related equipment.

This traffic may then be distributed onwards using WLL and mobile numbers. Grey telephony causes an estimated loss of over Rs.3 billion annually.