Reliable information reaching Adom News indicates the implementation of Ghana's proposed interconnect clearinghouse policy could delay as government and key industry in the country jaw-jaw over the policy.

The Minister of Communication, Chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Communication, and member of the National Communications Authority held a highly tensed meeting with industry players and high on the agenda was the ICH policy, which is currently generating a lot of interest and some amount of acrimony in the industry.

The high-level consultative meeting, which was said to have been characterized by some amount of calm tension and entrenched positions on the ICH policy lasted for five hours.

Present at the meeting were the heads of the six telcos, representatives of the Ghana Internet Service Providers Association (GISPA), and the Wireless Applications Service Providers Association of Ghana (WASPAG).

Attendees of the meeting are pretty much tight-lipped about exactly what transpired, but it is no secret the heated public argument between the regulator, telecom operators, pressure groups and even some individual lawmakers about the ICH policy.

Parliament, at some point, called for further and deeper consultation before implementation, but that was misrepresented as Parliament calling for a suspension of the policy.

The policy implementation is expected to take off latest by June this year, but MP for Obuasi West, Kwaku Kwarteng, together with Mr Elijah Adansi-Bonah, Research Director of Development Data (a policy research organisation), have sued the NCA, telcos and the selected ICH operator, Afriwave Telecoms Ghana, questioning the legality of the ICH.

Prior to that legal suit, Kwarteng had been in the media describing the ICH as an unwarranted venture, a product of cronyism and an avenue intended by the NCA to siphon undeserving funds and share with its cronies.

Indeed, telcos themselves responded to a public consultation document on the NCA's website questioning the necessity of the ICH given the existing functional interconnect arrangements between the telcos, and raising issues of extra cost to telcos and impact on quality of service among other things.

Pressure groups like IMANI Ghana, OccupyGhana and Media Foundation for West Africa have also been out there raising questions about how safe customers' privacy is under the ICH policy and whether ICH will not harm quality of service to the customer and push tariffs up.

Some also questioned how the ICH would help fight SIMBOX fraud as has been touted by the proponents of the policy.

Indeed, all these questions have received some answers, and much more information have been put out about the benefits of the ICH to telcos, their customers, local value added service providers and the country as a whole. But that has still not taken the acrimony and arguments away.

The NCA has for instance said it will pay fully for the setting up and operations of the ICH so there will be no cost to the telcos and the customers. It has said telcos would not need upgrades and or downgrades of equipment because ICH will meet every telco at the point of their need.

On the issue of quality of service, the NCA has said the same QoS standards and sanctions applied to telcos would be applied to the ICH; and on the issue of eavesdropping the NCA said ICH is also barred by law, just like the telcos are, from tapping into people's communication.

Meanwhile, some individual telecom experts have also said that ICH will boost local content, which is actually one of the main reasons for the policy. It will help other players in the ecosystem to connect to all players at a single point and save cost, instead of going to all players as individuals.

They insist that the ICH arrangement will even help telcos save money because maintenance of six interconnect equipment will now reduce to one and they will cut down cost, plus they will also be able to clear international roaming traffic locally and pay less, so that they prevent capital flight and also offer cheaper roaming tariffs.

The ICH would also have an extra job of international and domestic traffic monitoring for state revenue assurance on behalf of both the NCA and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

Meanwhile, the critics of the ICH are now questioning why a private entity was selected to run the ICH without the involvement of telcos and yet telcos are being compelled by law to connect to the equipment of that private entity.

There have also been suggestions as to why NCA could not collaborate with telcos to establish an ICH that all parties would feel confident and comfortable about rather than giving the license to a third party.

All these issues form part of an ongoing public debate. But Adom News is reliably informed that when all is said and done, the ICH will take off before the close of the year because it is already gearing up towards implementation.