Global Voice Group's operations against bypass fraud in Africa generate positive results

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, July 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Global Voice Group (GVG), the world leader in telecommunications governance technologies, has made a very positive assessment of its operations against telecoms fraud in Africa.

Since 2009, the company has focused on solving the growing problem of illegal SIM-box operators. These fraudsters use SIM-boxes and the Internet to disguise international calls as local calls, thus making huge profits at the expense of legal operators. This stratagem, which is known as "bypass", allows illegal operators to avoid the taxes and other costs related to international telecommunications. 

Bypass is a worldwide phenomenon that affects all international operators, by causing them to experience financial losses of close to 3 billion dollars each year, according to a recent study carried out by the CFCA.

GVG provides regulators with antifraud technologies that have the capacity to identify gray routes and to detect fraudulent lines in less than one hour, thus enabling legal operators to disconnect them promptly. 

In this way, GVG has contributed to disconnecting hundreds of thousands of suspicious or fraudulent lines in Ghana and the Republic of Guinea. The company has implemented the same antifraud system in the Republic of Congo and, more recently, in Liberia and Rwanda. Furthermore, GVG helped regulation authorities to set up antifraud units in cooperation with the judiciary system and the local operators and took part in investigations that led to the dismantling of several clandestine networks. 

GVG's antifraud program was developed specifically for the benefit of regulation authorities wishing to coordinate the fight against bypass fraud themselves and to optimize the collaboration between all stakeholders. On the basis of this new approach, the fight against fraud is no longer the sole responsibility of each African operator's internal management; it is now increasingly dealt with in a climate of consultation, under the leadership of an authority possessing the relevant competence and independence. 

Mr. Francois Dugue, Vice-President of GVG, highlighted that "the regulator's role is to protect the interests of all stakeholders. Obviously, this includes the interests of African States that collect premiums on international incoming calls, in accordance with both ITU recommendations regarding network externalities and their own national policies.  However, these policies have a number of opponents who accuse said premiums of contributing to the increase in bypass fraud and therefore advocate their abolition."

"This kind of reasoning," Mr. Dugue carried on, "implies that States should merely give up on their sovereign right to widen or strengthen their tax base, under the pretext that this may encourage fraud. Rather, GVG's revenue assurance program and its integrated antifraud component aim to protect the operators' revenues while ensuring sustainable conditions for the optimal enforcement of African States' pricing or tax policies."

About GVG
Created in 1998, Global Voice Group S.A. develops and implements advanced management and monitoring solutions for telecoms regulation authorities.  As a key investor and partner, we optimize the regulators' capacities at all levels to help them take up the current and future challenges of the sector, both at the national and international level.