The National Communications Authority (NCA) says it will go ahead with the implementation of the of the Interconnect Clearing House (ICH) following a court ruling on its implementation today.
[contextly_sidebar id=”C5CmkvQIUZJ0v8UMQsMpftp54LFsTH3V”]A commercial high court in Accra this morning 13th May, 2015, declined to rule on an injunction application filed by the Member of Parliament for Obuasi West Kwaku Kwarteng and Mr Elijah Adansi-Bonah, the Research Director of Development Data (a policy research organisation) on the interconnect clearing house project by the NCA.
Kwaku Kwarteng and Mr Elijah Adansi-Bonah sued the NCA over the project in March, 2015.
The Interconnect Clearing House (ICH) is an operator government is setting up to connect international calls and also interconnect calls between mobile networks on behalf of telecommunications companies (TELCOs) in Ghana.
Currently, the telcos have developed mutual arrangements and infrastructure for interconnecting calls.
Government is now asking the telcos to abandon their interconnect infrastructure and route their calls through the ICH.
The plaintiffs in their suit at the high court prayed the court to declare government’s move as “unlawful and unnecessary.”
They contend that while they have standard agreements with the telcos to transmit their communication, they have no such agreement with any ICH operator.
The plaintiffs further claim that the ICH is an “unconstitutional” interference in the communication rights of all telecommunications service subscribers and are asking the court to order government not to proceed with the implementation of the ICH.
But the court today directed for a full trial in the matter and failed to rule on an injunction application on the project.
Lawyer for the NCA Dennis Adjie Dwumor says the NCA will go ahead and implement the ICH.
‘We believe strongly the NCA will still proceed with it and go ahead with the implementation of the ICH.’
But one of the plaintiffs Kwaku Kwarteng says the NCA cannot proceed with the implementation of the project till the matter is determined in court.
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By: Vivian Kai Lokko/citifmonline.com/Ghana
