A bill that addresses several loopholes in Ghana's communication space has been passed to law by the country's parliament.

According to lawmakers, the Electronic Communications (Amendment) Bill of 2016 will streamline and rationalise activities of the stakeholders in the West African country's telecoms space.

Two key facets of the law will have immediate implications for the telecoms space - the focus on unregistered GSM SIM cards and the establishment of a centralised regulation facility or Interconnect Clearing House (ICH).

The legislation outlaws the possession and usage of unregistered GSM SIM cards and promises a fairer atmosphere for telecoms companies and other players.

It also mandates the National Communications Authority (NCA) to set up an ICH to address current regulatory, technical and financial challenges related to interconnection in the sector.

Under the law all operators must interconnect with each other via a single system, the ICH. This marks a breakaway from the current peer-to-to-peer system of interconnection and associated challenges including congestion, poor quality of service delivery and huge capital expenditure by a single operator.

It also allows the NCA to introduce multiple ICH facilities through licensure to enable competition, which the former provision sought to erode.

The Parliament also agreed that the ICH would become fully operational within the next six months and in the interim telecom operators must continue to work with the current arrangement before making a complete switch over.

"Interconnect Clearing House will significantly help the country fight the menace of SIM box fraud which has deprived the country and telecommunication companies' revenues amounting to billions of cedis," said Christian Kpesese, an Accra-based tech analyst.