Airtel Ghana on Wednesday introduced a short code, 919, to be used by customers to report SIM card fraud. The move aims to push the National Communications Authority (NCA), the local communications regulator, to curb the increasing number of local telecom violations.

Airtel said they hope illegal users will face penalties or termination of calls with the government’s help. Fraudsters are using the VOIP boxes to make international calls, which show up as local calls, avoiding international call charges, Airtel said. Philip Sowah, Airtel Ghana MD, on Wednesday said, ”Airtel Ghana has deployed state-of-the-art systems at very high costs to actively detect SIM box on a real time basis to enable us block these numbers the moment we detect them on our network”.

“The caller is often not aware of the activities of these cyber fraudsters which result in the loss of revenue to the state. This illegal activity is an issue of concern to Airtel Ghana, the Ministry of Communication (MoC) and the National Communications Authority (NCA), since the revenue loss affects the nation’s financial basket as well,” Airtel Ghana said.