Government installs system to track telecoms revenues
What you need to know:
- The intelligent network monitoring systems, among others, checks the multi-vendor network data, network performance, customer experience records, service quality performance, signalling statistics, documented data selections, customised data filtering and user configurable access.
- The operators have been doing self-declaration to the regulators.
Kampala. The Uganda Communications Commission says they have acquired new equipment to monitor the daily revenues of the telecom companies.
They say the new intelligent network monitoring system tracks all the calls of the telecom operators and knows how much they generate daily.
Though the system was expected to monitor only the voice and data aspect of the telecom system, UCC says it is now monitoring all the transactions of the telecom operators, including mobile money and the newly introduced social media tax.
For some time, MTN and Airtel have been opposed to the use of the intelligent network monitoring system, saying it intrudes into their lucrative mobile money business, but the UCC stood its ground.
The UCC executive director, Mr Godfrey Mutabazi, said for some time, the companies had been under declaring revenue and cheating the government.
Mr Mutabazi said with the introduction of intelligent network monitoring system, they are able to track the real time revenue and know how much each company is making.
“We have a solution in place and it is functional and we know how much they are earning and we do not have to beg them to tell us and they know it,” he said.
“We are using intelligent network monitoring system to track their revenues and government will collect the correct values based on what the system generates,” the UCC boss added.
The intelligent network monitoring systems, among others, checks the multi-vendor network data, network performance, customer experience records, service quality performance, signalling statistics, documented data selections, customised data filtering and user configurable access.
Function
It also does system health monitoring, proven fraud detection data and proven billing verification data. Since the inception of telecommunication in Uganda, telecom operators have had uncontrolled leeway in managing their affairs.
The operators have been doing self-declaration to the regulators.
However, since the entry of mobile money services, cyber security and terrorism, security agencies stepped in and UCC also directed telecom companies to grant the police access to their mobile money operations data.
With that, government moved swiftly and set up the Intelligence Network Monitoring System (INMS) in order to get full access to the telecom data system.
