Reliable information reaching Adom News indicates the mobile value added service (VAS) providers in the country have restored all their services on the Airtel network after an abrupt suspension due to "unfair" revenue share proposal from the telco.

It would be recalled that on March 17, 2016, over 20 top mobile VAS providers who constitute the Wireless Applications Services Providers Association of Ghana (WASPAG) announced a suspension of all their services on Airtel citing unfair revenue share.

Director of Regulatory and Corporate Affairs for WASPAG, Conrad Nyuur had told Adom News that they used to have a 50-50 revenue share arrangement with Airtel, but the telco had over the years imposed changes from 60-40, 70-30 and this year they proposed 80-20.

According to Nyuur, the VAS providers protested and Airtel made changes to 75-25 citing increased cost of operations resulting from rising taxes and utility bills.

"We found that as very flimsy because we also have rising taxes and rising utility bills to pay so we didn't understand why that should be a reason for them to take more of our money which is already way smaller than what they take," he said.

So the VAS players rejected the 75-25 and gave Airtel one month to call the proposal off, but Airtel did not get back to them until the deadline elapsed on March 16, 2016 and they suspended all their services.

Following the suspension, Airtel reportedly called a meeting with WASPAG but later called the meeting off and rather asked one of their officials to lobby the VAS players, which did not work.

But now, a leading member of WASPAG told Adom News Airtel has pulled back the 75-25 proposal so the VAS players have also restored their services.

The WASPAG official said even with the current 70-30 per cent revenue share in favor of Airtel, the telco sometimes pays them less than what the reconciled financials say, but they rather pay what they unilaterally compiled.

VAS players are the companies and individuals who develop the voice, SMS, MMS and WAP based services like inspiration messages, caller ring back tones, short audios, video and others that customers pay premium rates for on the various telecom networks.

The money generated from those services is shared between the telcos and the VAS players. The telcos take an average of 70% of the money and give the VAS players 30% even though the service was developed by the latter.

And very often some of the content the VAS players put on the telcos platform for sale belong to other content owners so the VAS players even share their 30% with those content owners while the telcos keep the 70%.

In other jurisdictions, VAS providers get a bigger share of the VAS revenue to help them develop more innovations and grow, so there have been questions as to why telcos in Ghana keep taking a lion’s share.

Nyuur told Adom News the telcos often gave "flimsy reasons" like rising taxes and utility bills, like Airtel did, or say that the new revenue share proposal is from their group headquarters abroad.

"We just can't understand why their bosses sit abroad and determine how much a local VAS should pay to them here in Ghana," he charged.

He noted that VAS player have tolerated the telcos for too long so it was necessary to suspend services on Airtel because if they had not, the other telcos would have also scooped some more money from the VAS players in the course of the year.

But it is important to note the VAS players are glad that at least one telco is considering giving them a bigger share of the VAS revenue, after so many years of giving them peanuts.