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Our Bureau

New Delhi, Aug. 18 The telecom regulator’s proposal to allow unrestricted Internet telephony comes as a huge relief for Internet service providers and the business process outsourcing industries. Both these segments have been demanding for this for more than four years.

Welcoming TRAI’s decision, the Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI) said, “This forward looking step will enable customers to make domestic and international calls to mobile and fixed line users at a fraction of the current costs. When implemented, these path-breaking recommendations will go a long way in increasing India’s Internet and broadband penetration.”

“We congratulate the TRAI and expect that the Government will implement these recommendations in its entirety, forthwith. Internet telephony in India could become the ‘killer app’ for broadband penetration – which has sadly lagged far behind the very successful mobile telephony in India,” says Mr Rajesh Chharia, President, ISPAI.

Nasscom also welcomed the TRAI recommendations. “This is a welcome step particularly for the Indian IT-BPO industry. Once approved, this move will effectively remove the last barrier to Internet telephony, and act as a natural corollary. This move will now allow voice transmission over Internet for a ‘PC to phone in India’, which will benefit the BPO industry to a large extent,” it said.

However, existing players have expressed concern over the TRAI’s recommendations. Mr T.V. Ramachandran, Director-General, COAI, stated that TRAI recommendations are against the very basic principle of level playing field since ISPs have been allowed to offer Net telephony at no additional cost.

“The existing operators have obtained access licence after paying a huge entry fee which is as high as Rs 1,650 crore for all India. Against this backdrop, it is very unfair to allow unfettered access to ISPs. Hence, in order to maintain the level playing field, it is imperative that ISPs should be required to migrate to UASL licence and should be subject to the same entry fee,” COAI said.

Globally almost 18 per cent of the voice calls are now being routed through the Internet and analysts expect the same trend to catch up in India once the barriers for offering Net telephony are removed.

Mr Sanjay Vig, CEO, Orange Business Services, India, said, “I am delighted to see the recommendations from TRAI hailing unrestricted telephony which is a step further towards ‘death of distance’. As recommended by the regulator, if NLD operators are allowed to connect to ISPs through public Internet, many domestic NLD operators possessing an optical-fibre network across the country, will have a new revenue stream.”

More Stories on : ISPs | Telecommunications | Outsourcing

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