NCC: Telecoms sector lost N1.06trn to call masking in two years

The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) says the telecoms industry has lost N1.06 trillion to call masking, call refiling and SIM boxing in two years.

Umar Danbatta, the commission’s executive vice chairman, made this known on Thursday at the 85th edition of the Telecoms Consumer Parliament which held in Lagos.

Danbatta, who was represented by Felicia Onwuegbuchulam, director, consumer affairs bureau at NCC, said the revenue loss started in September 2016 when the NCC reviewed the call termination rate for international inbound traffic from N3.90k per minute to N24.40k per minute.

He said the operators involved in call masking and refiling tampered with international calls and terminate them as local calls to avoid paying the new rate.

“The Commission is set to take the bull by the horn towards putting an end to call masking menace in the country. NCC is leveraging different consumer platforms to deepen awareness campaign on call masking and we advise consumers to report the local numbers through which they receive foreign calls as masked calls to the Commission for proper tracking,” he said.

According to Danbatta, the NCC has barred 750,000 lines assigned to 13 operators in the course of their investigation.

A situation where international call IDs are tampered with and appear like a local number is call masking.