Net telephony at last

India will formally join another select band of nations which have legalized
telephone services through the Internet on April 1. India's dominant telecom
service providers, like their counterparts elsewhere, had used the full power of
their monopoly to shape public policies to delay this customer-friendly service
as much as possible. That they have not triumphed fully and have only delayed
the inevitable by a few years is a true tribute to the unstoppable march of
technological progress.

Yet, the hands of these vested interests are visible in the latest government
notification about the opening up of the Net-based telephone services. It is not
open to all service providers. Only the existing Internet Service Providers
(ISPs) will be allowed to offer such services. Why? No particular reason except
that the nation's policy makers would like to retain their control and ensure
their relevance as long as possible.

Then there are other caveats. ISPs have to get their license agreements
amended to take up the phone services. Obviously, they have to meet the right
persons and meet the 'right' criterion to be given the right to provide
Net-based phone services.

There are more absurd restrictions. Net based telephone services could be
provided only between PCs in India to PCs in other countries and within the
country, PCs in India to telephones abroad but not within the country and IP
based H 323/SIP based terminals in India to similar terminals in India and
abroad, This clearly means that the government does not want customers to get
full benefits of cheap Internet-based telephone services. That is why it has
restricted such services to India based landline telephones and cellular
telephones. With this sleight of hand, the government has restricted the market
place for these services domestically. The only saving grace so far is that no
specific tariff has been fixed for such services. It will be upto the service
providers to charge based on what customers will be willing to pay. Here there
are not too many options for the service providers. Because, even with the
latest technologies, the quality of PC-based telephone services will not match
that of conventional services. Overseas call rates have been slashed recently.
Hence Net-based services will have to be competitive with the conventional
services. Moreover, the Instant Messenger (IM) technology which is becoming
increasingly popular worldwide will offer stiff competition to Net-based
telephone services. The IM technology is all set to make further inroads if
compatibility issues between the dominant providers are sorted out.

The government's 'control everything' syndrome is evident even in this
service. The service providers will have to set up expensive monitoring system
to offer government agencies the ability to keep track to the messages going
out. It is a different matter that various government agencies are not yet in a
position to deploy latest technologies to have meaningful, realtime analysis of
information gathered from Cyber space. Even the mighty US government's heavily
funded Intelligence agencies are several years behind in analyzing information
gathered from the telecom circuits.

The nation has lost over three years due to the inaction of policy makers to
allow Net telephony. However, it is heartening to note that the same agencies
which were fully opposed to Net-based phone services have swallowed their pride
and are now making it possible, even in a truncated form. Hopefully, other
policy glitches will be ironed out in similar manner in the coming months. The
major lesson from this issue is that it is fruitless to stop the march of
technologies which immensely benefit customers. The Net-based telephone services
have proved this convincingly.