- City Fajr Shuruq Duhr Asr Magrib Isha
- Dubai 04:24 05:43 12:19 15:46 18:51 20:09
The Sharjah Police have arrested two Asians, including a watchman, for selling illegal phone cards to customers.
The cards allegedly allowed users to make international calls for as long as 10 hours at no charge.
The watchman sold the cards for Dh30 to customers who wanted to make long international phone calls.
During the interrogation the suspects told the police that they received information of the phone cards through e-mails from someone based in a foreign country.
The police were notified about the activities by a police informer.
The police identified the location of the suspects and raided the watchman and found a large number of the phone cards in his possession.
The watchman told the police that he received these cards from a Pakistani national who sold them to him for Dh22.
The second suspect also informed the police that someone in a European country sends him the numbers of the phone cards through e-mail and after he receives them he prints them out and sells them to customers for Dh30.
The police detained the two suspects and referred the case to public prosecution.
How these calling cards work
Most of these calls of routed through cheap Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services routed through servers based in Europe and America.
The cost of VoIP calls work out much cheaper as it consumes less bandwidth compared to traditional calls made using circuit switching.
The VoIP system works by converting the analog audio signals into digital data that can be transmitted over the internet.
The system will work only when there is internet access either through a broadband or a Data package on the phone.
Patrick CK has beena regular user of a VoIP service called NetTelephone. “I have it installed on my laptop as well as my iPhone.
“It even has an android app. I recharge online and usually receive about 100 minutes of talktime for $10,” he said.
According to him it works much better when using a wifi facility. “The call gets disconnected very often while on data package,” he adds.
Santosh K, a resident of Sharjah says he has been using Pronto Dialer last year.
“I was able to talk for almost 600 minutes for just Dh30. The app was installed on my phone and a contact in Sharjah used to recharge my talk time. But it has stopped since May,” he added.
Using VoIP service in the UAE is strictly banned.
Image from shutterstock
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