Position Papers/Internet Telephony
From Www.india-gii.org
Conventional telecom in this country has received protection from Internet telephony for 10 years now -- when VSNL first offered Internet services in the country, they made you sign a form that said that you would not use it for Internet telephony.
It is not the job of the TRAI to protect companies from new technologies. In fact, such protection makes them weaker. If even after 10 years, conventional telecom is not able to cope with such competition, then maybe it has some fundamental flaws which need addressing. The longer the restrictions on Internet telephony continue, the longer these companies delay addressing these flaws. If indeed Internet telephony is superior, perhaps our telcos should have been investing in it, instead of conventional technologies. TRAI restrictions may have, in effect, forced investment in outdated technologies.
Says http://www.dotindia.com/ntp/ntpindex.htm:
> 3.2 Internet Telephony > Internet telephony shall not be permitted at this stage. However, Government will continue to monitor the technological innovations and > their impact on national development and review this issue at an appropriate time.
This is from NTP 99. Over 5 years later, surely the time has come for such a review. I urge that this be conducted before deciding to extend such protection indefinitely, as the unified license does.
There are other problems with the policy.
http://www.dotindia.com/isp/guidelines.doc says
> 2.1 Internet Telephony means an Application Service, which the customers of ISPs can avail from their Personal Computers (PC) capable of processing voice signals > or other IP based Customer Premises Equipment (CPE)
Firstly, these guidelines make no effort to define a PC. Is a
laptop a PC? Is a palmtop a PC? If it looks like a phone, but has
a computer inside, is it a phone or a PC? Now we have WiFi
phones. Are they phones, or PCs?
Clearly, this distinction is vague, and with technological progress, less and less tenable. Without a precise definition, the TRAI leaves room for the DOT to interpret it in a manner best suited to the commercial needs of BSNL/MTNL.
Then again, lots of software on the Internet makes use of voice. Microsoft's Netmeeting, yahoo messenger, myriad video conferencing tools, even games, all make use of interactive voice. Do all of these come under the ambit of Internet telephony? Currently, the DOT arbitrarily bans some.
If you take a look at what is happening around the world in the telecom space, Internet telephony is growing at a furious pace. This is a very important area for innovation in telecom. Effectively, though, such a policy makes it very difficult for an Indian entrepreneur to get involved: as soon as one becomes successful, there is danger that the DOT will notice and ban it.
Imagine what would have happened, if an IT regulator in the seventies and early eighties had similarly tried to protect ECIL from competition from PCs. We would never have become a major player in software exports.
Does the TRAI wish to be remembered for having crippled Indian telecommunications, preventing it from reaching similar commanding heights in telecom exports? For, effectively, trying to protect bullock carts from competition from the truck?
TRAI is a valued member of Alliance 2007, which seeks to bring telecom to all our villages in less than 3 years. What the alliance expects from TRAI, are policy initiatives that are conducive to rural telecom. The current Internet telephony policy is decidedly anti-poor, since it is allowed for people with access to PCs, but not for the poor who only have access to a public phone. The unified license proposal contains inexplicable restrictions on rural telephony. These need urgent reexamination.
Some thoughts on Internet Telephony
Since VoIP is a disruptive technology that can impact the revenues of incumbents, it might be a good idea to allow the usage of VoIP in areas where deployments are very thin on the ground or have not happened. For example in rural areas or in areas where the telephony finds it difficult to reach. Most of these areas are best served by wireless based internet telephony.
Ashar Farhan posted on india-gii on November 26, 2004:
i saw an ad in the papers this week from DoT that made the following three
points:
1. Grey operators are routing calls that appear as local numbers. 2. These are illegal operators that rob country of its legitimate revenue. 3. These operators pose a national security challenge.
1. Grey calls appear as local numbers:
This is grossly incorrect. Given an E1 line, it can be made to display any number on outgoing calls. The technology is simple, all you need is to download the open source software from asterisk.org.
here are some links to shoot down this claim:
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/9061 http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/28/1450205&tid=215&tid=172
Contrariwise, it is perfectly plausible that a legitimate long distance call will appear as a local number. the reason is that you have to depend upon your international peer to provide you with the caller-id and the international peer will in turn depend upon another partner and so forth. if any of these legs is on voip, which is a given in most cases, there is no caller-id to speak of. hence, the local ILD players of India are forced to either display 'Unknown/Witheld' or any number from thier local trunk series.
2. They rob country of its revenue. Actually, the money goes to BSNL and its huge staff and also some trade union funds. BSNL is a company. Other private operators are forced to subsidize BSNL just because DoT says so. The money goes into funding BSNL's losses. If BSNL was indeed a bleeding heart, it would not spend those crores building wireless networks in big cities that already have 7 operators.
3. National security Well, it stupid that people calling from PCs in India to numbers outside India are not a security threat while people from PCs abroad, calling Indian nubmers are a security threat. VoIP on PC2PC, outbound call centers and speakfreely.org are aall allowed inspite of being an equal if not a worse threat.
The PC2Phone providers like Sify et al are clueless about who is calling whom. The IM based voice services like yahoo, MSN and Skype are completely untrackable.
All in all, a lot of huey. DoT charged a fat lot from the ILD operators who have been out-dated by VoIP. now there are many red faces at sanchar bhavan.
- farhan
