The Global Voice Group (GVG) handed over the Telecom Traffic Monitoring System (TTMS) platform to the Tanzania Communications Regulatory Authority (TCRA) at a ceremony held on 18 January in Dar es Salaam
The event was attended by the President of the United Republic of Tanzania, John Magufuli, the director general of TCRA, James Kilaba and other senior government officials.
Kilaba revealed that, through the TTMS system, TCRA had collected more than US$40.2mn in revenue over the five years from 2013 to 2018.
James Claude, CEO of GVG, said, “The TTMS provides enhanced oversight capacities that benefit Tanzania and all Tanzanians by enabling TCRA and the government to see, in real-time, what is really going on in the telecom sector in terms of quality, security, performance, and compliance, thus significantly improving the governance of a sector that plays a major role in the socio-economic development of the country.”
Claude explained that the TTMS strengthens the role of the TCRA and the government, not only as regulators and policy-makers but also as well-informed promoters of ICT growth and development in Tanzania.
“The system’s mobile money oversight component allows authorities to oversee these fast-growing services and to monitor their regulatory compliance as well as their security, reliability and quality for Tanzanians, especially the unbanked ones for whom mobile money represent essential services for their financial inclusion,” he added.
“The device identification component provides effective means to fight against counterfeited, stolen and non-compliant devices that adversely impact on Tanzanian consumers and the handset market in the country while raising public safety and national security concerns,” he stated.
Claude pointed out that the traffic measurement and anti-fraud component makes networks safer for Tanzanian consumers by effectively tracking and eliminating fraudulent traffic.
According to Kilaba, international communication by-pass fraud has declined from 65 to just 10 per cent between 2007 and 2017. “At least 224mn online content operators have already been successfully registered and licensed,” he noted.
“In less than one year, in collaboration with our Swiss partner in the consortium, SGS Societe Generale de Surveillance (SGS) , we were able to deliver a system that set TCRA apart by making it the very first regulator in the world to use data technologies in order to closely monitor the financial performance of the telecom industry,” he concluded.
