Gang hacks international calls

An international phone call trafficker was apprehended in his house in the south by the secretariat of the Criminal Investigative Department (CID).
 
The detained, Ayman Ahmed al-Surmi, is being interrogated by the CID while the search for other suspects, including al-Surmi’s brother, continues. (See Photos)
 
The technical materials used for the trafficking, consisting of tow power generators and tow call receivers which are not available through TeleYemen, were found in the house of al-Surmi.
 
There were also several photocopies of personal IDs at the suspect’s house used in the illegal purchase of SIM cards.
 
“The systems that were used in the trafficking were absolutely smuggled since it’s not legal for personnel to get hold of them” said Abdul Rahman al-Matari the Chief Technical officer counterpart in TeleYemen.  Al-Matari added that “these systems are only available for the embassies and multinational corporations.”
 
The ease in using the Voice Over Internet Protocols (VoIP) tempted many local traffickers to cooperate with service providers outside Yemen to traffic calls.  These outside providers traffic international phone calls through the internet without going through Yemen Telecommunication (TeleYemen) the local body responsible for regulating all international phone calls.
 
VoIP is a general term for a family of transmission technologies for delivery of voice communications over IP networks such as the Internet or other packet-switched networks. Other terms frequently encountered and synonymous with VoIP are IP Telephony, Internet Telephony, Voice Over Broadband (VOBB), Broadband Telephony, and Broadband Phone.
 
Internet telephony refers to communications services — voice, facsimile, and/or voice-messaging applications — that are transported via the Internet, rather than the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The basic steps involved in originating an Internet telephone call are conversion of the analog voice signal to digital format and compression/translation of the signal into Internet protocol (IP) packets for transmission over the Internet; the process is reversed at the receiving end.
 
International phone call trafficking goes through satellite connections or through broadband services, the traffickers receive it and then redistribute it through the local network by using local phone numbers (mobile and fixed phones) paying the tariff of local calls while receiving double this fee.
 
The VOIP technology is licensed in many countries but not permitted in Yemen and many other developing countries.  These restrictions are in place to maintain the income of the national telecommunication companies, since the clearance revenue between countries came in advance of the developing countries.
 
TeleYemen experts estimate that this illegal trafficking annually costs the national revenue millions of US. Dollars.  This is money intended for the Yemen Treasury.

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