The grey market operations in the Indian international telephony sector has been a worrisome norm resulting in losses of Rs 1,800 crore (Rs 18 billion) annually not only to the government and legitimate operators but also a grave threat to national security.
According to telecom operators in Mumbai, the grey market essentially thrives on arbitrage opportunities between legitimate and illegitimate channels and as the cost of termination in the legal channel increases, more and more incoming international traffic would flow into the grey channel.
This is because of the significantly higher termination cost in India compared to the rates applicable in most developing and developed nations, they pointed out.
Operators said, there is no way the identity of a caller can be found out in an illegally routed traffic because the operators in this market are becoming increasingly hi-tech using advanced technologies like calling cards and cell phones and can easily conceal their locations by suppressing the cellular and WILL connection, which are used to terminate the illegal traffic to the national network.
Most of the grey market operators have set up their shops in big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune and created illegal international long distance access for subscribers in remote areas.
These operators are involved largely in hawala transactions, cricket 'satta' business and other anti-national activities, sources said.
The grey market operators generally use VSAT or Internet leased lines. In fact, the easy availability of Internet bandwidth in small towns coupled with the ignorance of local law enforcement agencies has led to further growth of grey market operations.
According to statistics provided by the operators, one out of every four international calls made into India from a major economic partner such as the United States is illegal and collectively such illegal calls from leading nations like Canada and UK amounted to about 50-55 per cent of the total incoming international calls into India.
UNI
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