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Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has notified the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for making difference of blacklist and whitelist IP addresses used by various service providers.
The directives issued by the authority recently stated that white list would be the list of IP addresses maintained of service providers for the purpose of allowing them for using VoIP services.
The list will be maintained by the Vigilance Directorate of PTA and will contain the IPs reported by PTA licensed operators authorized by the government of Pakistan.
As per current rules, regulations, government policies and the VoIP clarification issued by PTA, any IP address would be included in the white list which fulfills different criteria and terms of engagements under regulations and formats.
PTA instructed that Cellular Mobile Operators which are assigned to APNs for GPRS/EDGE that these IP’s would be used exclusively for the purpose these will be whitelisted.
The detection of any commercial VoIP service on these IP’s will render them a candidate for permanent blocking in-addition to action against the concerned CVAS licensee/CMO, PTA warned.
The IP addresses will be preferred for while-list for exclusive use of HEC recognized educational institutions for their academic activities. In such cases the LDI/LL operators will also provide the other details like usage threshold values based on hours for which the IP will be active daily and maximum number of VoIP sessions which it will make in an hour along with any predefined cellular / local loop numbers involved in the VoIP sessions.
The maximum usage threshold will be limited to 8 hours per day with a maximum of 10 sessions, per hour. Besides, the maximum monthly hours should not exceed 90 hours.
The IP addresses are allowed for providing international Video Conference facility through by LDIs/LL/CVARS operators to their non-licensed customers. However, switching within Pakistan is only allowed through LL / LDI as per their license conditions.
The service providers including Long Distance and International (LDI) and Landline (LL) operators referred to the authority as competent on the prescribed format for its telephony traffic.
The IP address may be included on the recommendation of LDI and LL operator belonging to its non-licensed customers like International Call Centers for their International Voice Communication.
The LDI/LL will report the IPs on the prescribed format along with valid registration with Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) and any other information required by the Vigilance Directorate.
IP addresses reported by ISPs and CVAS (data) operators allocated to their network elements e.g. gateways, etc. whose automatic blocking may cause problems for data customers will be included in whitelist as well.
IP Addresses reported by Transworld Associates (TWA) for provisioning of bandwidth to Call Centers for their Call Center operations subject to approval of Authority on case to case basis.
Visit http://www.pta.gov.pk/media/sop_white_listing_2012.pdf for detail view of PTA instruction
