The National Communications Authority (NCA) and others, who were sued in relation to the Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH), have filed their responses pending first hearing on April 15, 2015, Adom News has learnt.

The others are all six telecom operators in the country and the selected ICH operator, Afriwave Telecoms Ghana Limited.

Reliable sources say counsel for NCA is Yoni Kolendi of Kolendi at Law; counsel for Afriwave is Ekow Daniels of Gyan Chambers and the telcos are allegedly being represented by Bentsi Enchill, Letsa and Ankomah Chambers.

The Member of Parliament (MP) for Obuasi West, Kwaku Kwarteng, together with Elijah Adansi-Bonah, the Research Director of Development Data (a policy research organization), sued the NCA, telcos and Afriwave early last month challenging the legality, constitutionality and necessity of the ICH.

The plaintiffs are praying the court to declare government’s move as “unlawful, unnecessary and an unconstitutional interference in the communication rights of telecom subscribers in the country.”

The ICH is being set up as a private operator to connect international calls and interconnect calls between mobile networks in the country. It would also do real time monitoring of all domestic traffic on behalf of Ghana Revenue Authority.

Currently, the telcos have mutual arrangements and systems for interconnecting calls but government is asking them to abandon that and connect calls through the ICH.

But the plaintiffs contend that while subscribers have standard agreements with the telcos to transmit their communication, they have no such agreement with any ICH operator.

They are therefore asking the court to order government not to proceed with the implementation of the ICH policy.

Meanwhile, Kwaku Kwarteng had argued on various platforms that the ICH idea is nothing but “dubious arrangement between government and its cronies in the private sector to benefit illegitimately from tax payers.”

Apart from Kwaku Kwarteng and his colleague, several other organizations including the Wireless Applications Service Providers Association of Ghana (WASPAG), Ghana Internet Service Providers Association (GISPA), Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), pressure group OccupyGhana and others have kicked against it.

Interestingly, even the telcos, who are respondents in this law suit actually support the plaintiffs’ position fully. The telcos themselves have raised objections to the ICH in their responses to ICH policy proposal published on the NCA’s website.

The NCA has spelt out several benefits of the ICH to the country, consumers, local app developers and even the telcos. The benefits include major boost in local content in the telecom industry, revenue assurance for the state, cost cutting for telcos and its resultant affordable tariffs for consumers among other things.

They have also argued that the ICH would help stop the SIM box fraud menace as well.

But all that would be decided by the court beginning April 15, 2015.

Adom News is reliably informed that the fact that the ICH policy is a cabinet initiative and therefore has presidential assent would be a major factor in court.