The National Communications Authority has licensed a Ghanaian company called Across Network Technologies (ANT) Limited to offer toll free and premium voice and SMS services across all telecom networks in the country.

The license certificate, issued on February 4, 2015, stated that the license was in accordance with the NCA Act 2008, Act 769, and it is valid for five years.

The company would be operating under the brand name AntCellular, and would be offering toll free voice and SMS services on the 0800 number block, and similar premium services on the 0900 number block.

AntCellular will deploy an independent soft switch to aggregate calls from the mobile networks on number blocks 0800 and 0900 and route the calls to the customer. Similarly, an SMS gateway will be deployed to aggregate SMS from the mobile networks and forward to the customers.

Currently, apart from the emergency numbers like 191, 192 and 193 for the police, fire service, and ambulance service which are accessible on every network, some of the telcos have also activated some toll free numbers but only for their customers.

But the Founder of ANT Ltd, Eyome Ackah told Adom News AntCellular would open up the toll free space for customers of all networks to be able to call or send SMS to various institutions for free, no matter what network they use.

He said the toll free services available on 0800 would include FreeCall for voice and FreeTxt for SMS, while the premium paid services on 0900 would be CallPlus and TxtPlus.

“Apart from those services, AntCellular will also be offering other value added service (VAS) such as short code aggregation, and SMS notification,” he said.

Eyome Ackah said negotiations with telcos for the activation of the 0800 and 0900 number blocks have been going well so far, adding that they are targeting April this year for the rollout of both the toll free and premium services.

According to him, business institutions like banks, insurance companies, radio and TV stations and many more, plus individual professionals like doctors, lawyers and others could request for both toll free and premium numbers on which their various categories of customers could reach them.

“For the 0800 toll free numbers the customer calls for free and the institution pays AntCellular for calls received on that line, while for the premium 0900 numbers the customer will pay anything between 19Gp and 99Gp depending on the prefix of the number,” he said.

AntCellular will pay the mobile networks from revenue it earns from the businesses who apply for the 0800 toll free numbers. The mobile networks therefore do not offer the service free of charge.

He noted that there are always people who would not want to call a toll free number and join a queue so the institutions can activate the 0900 numbers for such person to call and pay for premium service.

Eyome Ackah said ANT would be paying for each 0800 and 0900 number the NCA issues to it on behalf of any institution, adding the NCA would issue the numbers on first come first served basis, and the institutions in question would be paying monthly rental fees for the toll free 0800 and premium 0900 numbers to ANT.

“Institutions which request for 0900 numbers would also get to share the revenue generated from calls to those number with AntCellular and the mobile networks,” he said.

Eyome Ackah, who named V-Mobile CEO Fouad Chalabi as one of his partners, noted that currently he is personally negotiating with telcos on how much they (the telcos) will charge for each minute of call that is originated from their networks on the 0800 number block, but he believes they will be fair in their pricing to make the service a success.