Five companies have put in bids for a license to start the Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH) by June next year, Adom News can confirm.

The companies are Subah Infosolutions Limited, Global Voice Group (GVG), Afriwave Telecoms Ghana Limited, Prodigy and Medallion and Consult Telecoms.

The bid comes at a time when telecom operators in the country are vehemently opposing the compulsion on them to link up to the coming Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH).

The telcos insist that they have invested heavily into building interconnect systems which  are currently working fine for which reason there is no point in connecting to a central clearinghouse, which promises no real value but would rather trigger additional cost.

They also argue that the ICH will be a central point of failure because all communication would have to go through the ICH so when there is a problem at the ICH it will affect every telco and possibly ISP and VAS provider in the country, unlike the current situation where problems are localized on the respective telcos network.

The protests notwithstanding, the National Communication Authority (NCA) is convinced ICH is the proper way to monitor commercial activities by the companies.

Of the five bidding for the license, Subah Infosolutions and GVG belong to the Jospong Group of Companies. Subah is currently doing real time auditing of the domestic telecoms traffic on behalf of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

GVG is also the same company the NCA employed to do real time monitoring of international traffic coming into this country, but a citizens’ court action, led to a court injunction that has stalled the project till date.

Afriwave is also a Ghanaian company headed by David Poku, known in Ghana’s telecoms circles for his major contribution to building networks like Westel from scratch and also for doing stuff for the other telcos at various times.

Prodigy and Medallion is said to have its roots in Nigeria, where there is a poorly performing ICH which owes the telecom operators in that country.

The fifth candidate is Consult Telecoms, which is said to be a consortium led by one Ghanaian passport-wielding Lebanese, who worked with one of the leading telcos in the country. His name was only given as Nasr.

The ICH is one of four new license categories the NCA is seeking to issue next year. One of the promises from the NCA was that the licenses were going to ensure improved local content in the telecom industry.

The ICH

The ICH will be a private monopoly and each telco, ISP, Telecoms Value Added Service (VAS) providers and other players within the telecommunications and ICT system in Ghana would be required by law to connect to it for real time monitoring. All international gateways are also expected to connect to the ICH.

This means Subah’s current work (domestic real time traffic verification) will now be the work of the ICH and the work that NCA attempted to do through GVG would also become the work of the ICH, but this time not as a project, but an activity backed by law.