NCA to charge annual rent on new phone numbers

The National Communication Authority (NCA) is now going to charge an annual rent in addition to initial fees on new blocks of phone numbers it would issue to the telecoms operators beginning immediately.

 
The NCA initially gave each telco a block of 10million numbers (the 02X numbers) as part of their licensing package for free and subsequently the telcos were charged a flat rate of US$1million for new blocks of 10million numbers (the 05X numbers).

 
But the NCA says the telcos are not managing the numbers efficiently because they keep requesting for additional blocks of numbers while most of the ones they already have remain inactive.

 
Speaking to ADOMBUSINESS at the just ended ITU World Conference on International Telecoms (WCIT-13) in Bangkok, Thailand, Deputy Director of Regulatory Administration at the NCA, Patrick Laryea said the new regime is to ensure efficiency in number management.

 
He said the initial flat rate was just the cost of the new code that came with the new block of numbers, so that initial charge would remain and the annual rent would be added to motivate telcos to manage the numbers judiciously.

 
“But the rent fee will not be the same for all telcos. It will depend on the number block one is requesting for. For those requesting numbers beyond the first 20million, the rent per number is 40cents (over 91Gp) per number but it is less for those below 20million,” he said.

 
So far, MTN, Vodafone and Tigo have already crossed the 20 million mark, having already requested for and deployed the second block of 10million numbers with the 05X code. Airtel, Glo and Expresso are yet to have the second block.    

 
Mr. Laryea noted, for instance, that records available to NCA indicates about 500,000 new SIMs are activated on MTN every month, but an average of about 100,000 remain by the close of the month, and MTN is required to deactivate the remaining 400,000 and reassign them to other people after 90 days, but they hardly do.

 
“The telcos usually give the excuse that some customers travel outside the country and return to reactivate their numbers so they find it difficult reassigning those numbers to other people even after the mandatory 90-day deadline,” he said.

 
Mr. Laryea said the phone numbers are a national resource and the telcos are required to obey the law in managing them efficiently so the rent system would motivate them to follow the law, adding that it would also push them to educate their customers on the need to keep their numbers active or their lines would be deactivated.

 
“If you pay annual rent on numbers that remain inactive on your network and do not generate any revenue for you that would be a loss to you as a telco so you now have reason to obey the law and deactivate inactive numbers and reassign them,” he said.

 
He explained that this annual rent would strictly affect numbers in the new block, which would not include the 02X for all telcos. But for some telcos who are yet to request for the 05X number, those would be affected, except the annual rent would be less than 40 cents per number. 

 
Extra cost for consumers
 
This new fee regime comes at a time when the ITU is expressing concern about the numerous taxes, charges, and levies being placed on telecom industry players, which would eventually be passed on to consumers.

 
The telcos in Ghana have already been absorbing charges such as the 'double' Communication Service Tax (CST), MNP fees and others on behalf of their customers, but it is not clear whether they would absorb this one.

 
It is however not a secret that some telcos have made it a habit to be distributing their SIM cards for free to tourists on some partner airlines arriving in Ghana as a marketing strategy.

 
Most of those SIMs are activated and used briefly and the telcos are required by law to deactivate them after 90 days of remaining inactive and reassign them but the records show they do not.

 
The telcos also assign some blocks of numbers, usually up to 1,000 numbers to organizations, even when those organizations do not use all the 1,000 numbers at a go.

 
The telcos themselves have also assigned certain blocks of numbers to themselves to be given to new staff and partners as and when they get employed. They have also assigned some numbers as short codes for promotions and some of those numbers are still waiting to be used. 

 
Meanwhile, some MTN and Vodafone customers have told ADOMBUSINESS they have lost possession of some phone numbers in the recent past because those numbers remained inactive for a while. According to those customers the networks told them the numbers have been churned and reassigned to other users.