News Details  :

V OICE over internet protocol (VoIP) or internet telephony is a value added service to make a voice call to other countries, using internet/broadband as a medium. Imagine a student staying at a hostel. Normally, students are availing internet services in the privacy of their rooms, but how many times have we heard of a phone connection in their rooms?
There are innumerable students whose parents are in other parts of the country. It will be a big boon for them to use one medium (internet) to browse the world wide web for their study-related research, and talk as well. There are also a large number of families in India whose close relatives have gone abroad to make a livelihood. Internet telephony provides an inexpensive mode of communication through which they can practically talk to their loved ones abroad or even in country on very frequent intervals. There are two primary ways to do voice telephony:
Conventional, through a fixed line: You connect to any phone anywhere in the world through a unique phone number.
Connectivity is via fixed lines or mobile Internet telephony: The voice travels as data packets through the internet cloud. This is another option, as it does not en tail the laying of physical cables.
Internet telephony in rural/remote areas can easily be bundled with a broadband connection. One PC with a broadband connection and internet telephony at least to a post office or a village panchayat can be provided. If a person sitting in Delhi or Mumbai can talk to a person in New York or Los Angeles for less than Re1 per minute, why can't we offer such facility to our own rural people with in India?
Internet telephony could be the killer application to promote broadband in the country. It will reduce the cost of telecom drastically, which we can find out from the Trai report on international calling. In 2005-2006, the total outgoing calls from India was 2,500 million minutes. In this, the share of VoIP through ISPs was 250 million, while in 2006-2007, the minutes increased to 3,500 million and, the share of VoIP through ISPs increased to 800 million minutes.
We should also understand that the cellular, CDMA and basic service operators were charging Rs 4.20 per minute while the ISPs were charging Re 1 per minute, including 6% AGR. The VoIP services were allowed to telcos from April 1, 2006. But till date, they have not started these services. If the government was serious to serve the Indian users, especially the rural population with quality and reasonable cost of services, then they should allow the ISPs to offer unrestricted internet telephony.
We can assure that the rates can come down to around Re 1 or even lower. In the network of an ISP, local calls can be zero and 0.15 paise for an STD call. Accordingly, the usage can also increase. The government's main objective is to provide quality telecom services to the people. In spite of allowing the same to the access service providers and unified access service licensees, till date, they have not started these services.