Wireless applications service providers in Ghana say they are glad about the one-stop-shop opportunity the interconnect clearinghouse (ICH) will provide for them to connect to all telcos.

The Wireless Applications Service Providers Association of Ghana (WASPAG) is however, worried there may be a gap in the revenue reconciliation process at the ICH.

WASPAG is a group of licensed Ghanaian mobile value added service providers (VASPs) with the expertise and technology to distribute content such as bulk and other special SMS, ringtones and caller ring-back tones, short audios and videos and others through short codes on the mobile networks.

To do this, they obtain licensed short codes from the industry regulator, National Communications Authority (NCA) and then make direct contacts with each of the telcos for activation of the licensed short codes before they can use it.

According to the Regulatory and Corporate Affairs Director of WASPAG, Conrad Nyuur, often, the telcos refuse to activate some licensed short codes with the excuse that it does not make business sense for the respective telcos.

Nyuur is outraged as to why a telco would blatantly refuse to activate a licensed short code and the regulator would sit by and do absolutely nothing to enforce the regulations regarding licensed short codes.

He is however glad that to the extent that the ICH will be a one-stop-shop for connecting to telcos and activating short codes for VAS, "we think the ICH is a good idea."

But he told Adom News WASPAG is still worried that the role of the ICH as a middle man might rather injure the VAS players by causing significant financial losses.

He explained that "for instance if we send one million messages to the ICH and pay for that and the ICH sends those messages to the respective telco but the telco shows proof that it was only able to deliver 200,000 out of the one million so they pay for only that, we would have then paid ICH for an extra 800,000 messages which were not delivered and that will be our loss."

NCA

But the NCA has explained that under the new ICH regime, payment would not be made until after the final reconciliation. So if the telco makes payment for 200,000 messages, as in Nyuur's analogy, that is exactly what the VAS player will pay the ICH for and not the original one million messages sent.

The NCA is also surprised that WASPAG is complaining about telcos not activating licensed short codes.

According to the NCA, it deals with individual licensed VAS players and not an association like WASPAG; and till date, no VAS player has reported any such non-competitive behavior by any telco to the NCA.

"We therefore admonish the VAS players to use the appropriate channels of report these issues to the NCA and they will be dealt with in accordance to laid down regulations," the NCA said in a response to Adom News.

Afriwave

Meanwhile, the CEO of the licensed ICH operator, Afriwave Telecoms Ghana Limited, Philip Sowah recently announced that the aspect where ICH will mediate between VAS players and telcos is in the second phase of its operations.

He told Adom News they will engage the VAS players extensively prior to the implementation of that phase, to ensure mutual understanding of how things will work.