Dr Omane Boamah
The Wireless Applications Service Providers Association of Ghana (WASPAG) has criticized individuals in Ghana and abroad who use overseas gateways to sell bulk mobile/wireless content to people in Ghana at midnight without its knowledge.
According to the organization, such activities negatively affect genuine players in the industry.
Director of Regulatory Affairs for WASPAG, Conrad Nyuur, who is also General Manager of Mobile Content.com, in a recent statement, said such quarks are, for instance, responsible for phone users receiving SMS or other mobile content from short codes they do not subscribe to.
“There have also been instances whereby phone users subscribe to short code service and get charged regularly but never get the service while others also subscribe to SMS banking service but never get service even though they get charged for it, and some of them are down to pure fraud where some fake WASPs pretend to be organizations they are not and send messages on behalf of that organization.”
“Most of these fake players are not registered locally and yet they operate WASP services here and some of them send unsavory and deceptive messages/content on behalf of unidentifiable clients to unsuspecting Ghanaians. We are concerned that such activities will make the National Communication Authority (NCA) jump on all of us one of these days and that will not be good for our industry,” Nyuur said.
The WASP industry in Ghana is only about 10 years old and still an emerging one but the challenges it is facing from infiltrators pose a major threat to its survival, he noted.
Some top players in the industry include Mobile Content.com, SMSGH, Rancard Solutions, MTech Communications, Nosmay, TXT Ghana and MediaEdge-gsm.
They have all signed on to a very comprehensive Code of Ethics published on the WASPAG website – www.waspag.com with a determination to protect end users against bad practices and the abuse in the system.
“Our Code of Ethics, for instance, empowers our members to filter the ID of anyone using members’ networks to distribute mobile content and when we find that consumers rights are being violated we are required to either report or block that person’s access,” he said.
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