Interview with mister Francis Afful, Senior Manager RAFM, MTN Ghana

Francis, a little throwback to July 2020. It’s the middle of the Corona crisis, everybody is working from home and you’re the main guest of a Risk an Assurance Group TV broadcast because of your extensive experience in fraud fighting. You mentioned during that episode that in the last few months prior to that your SB-problem tripled. Did you feel like you were losing the battle vs bypass fraudsters?

• It was difficult to see all those minutes going through the grey routes. It was a timely intervention to go into a POC with Calltic at the time we did.

In the middle of that ‘crisis’, if I may call it that way, MTN Group asked you to start up a trial with this new kid on the block ‘Calltic’. What did you think? ‘Oh no, yet another witchcraft solution?’ or did you feel different about our completely different approach?

• I am a believer of trying new ways of dealing with challenges and when I heard about your solution, I was excited and felt that it may provide an alternative to the solution we had in place.

Ok, fast forward to mid-2021. What’s the SB-situation now like on MTN Ghana? 

• I must say that the performance of the Calltic solution was way above my expectation. We are currently identifying the SIMBOX numbers faster and covering wider MSISDNs than we were doing before.

In your opinion the best way to fight SIMboxing was to combine TCG with CDR-analysis and definitely not try to create an inhouse solution. Now that you teamed up with Calltic, has your opinion changed?

• It is true that we have seen massive improvement in time-to-detect and coverage of detection. However, I will still insist that it helps to have systems that use different approaches to detecting SIMBOX fraud.

Efficiency and pricing are of course essential to operators who are looking for an SB-detection-vendor. But does Calltic also stand out in any other segment of the business?

• Calltic stands out in the area of effectiveness customer service. Your team is willing to listen to the customer concerns and then work with the customer to improve effectiveness and efficiency. It is one thing I like about Calltic.

Interconnect fraud is of course a national problem in which competitors are urged to collaborate. Therefore, we’re very grateful that you addressed your fellow operators in Ghana and advised them to listen to what we have to offer. Any word of advice for operators outside of Ghana?

• Fighting SIMBOX is not a competition of which operator has the best solution in the environment. it is about the collaborative effort by all operators in a that ecosystems in fighting the menace that makes the difference. If there exist an arbitrage, there will be SIMBOX and if there is SIMBOX then there is the need to the network operators to work together as network operators to deal with it by acquiring the best solution that ensure timely and wider coverage of detection.