Netting a tide

Internet is a technology whose
main character is the pace at which the technological changes take place. The
civil society, particularly policy makers and government administrators, have
certainly lagged behind in lapping up the best Net technology has to offer, as
quickly as the offerings. This is the case the world over and India is no
exception to this.

The latest evidence of the
society's ability to cope up with ‘Net speed’ is an expert committee's
recommendations on allowing Internet based telephone services in the country.
The committee has given the go ahead, but would like it to be operational only
from April next. This is yet another clear case of the government, and its
operational units, keeping its interest above that of the people and
particularly consumers.

Because, the decision to
postpone the impending arrival of a new and highly consumer-oriented technology,
is to protect the monopoly profits of two leading government-owned telecom
service providers. They are the overseas telecom giant, VSNL and the domestic
major, BSNL. The reasoning for the delayed introduction is that the overseas
telecom services are expected to be thrown open to private players only from
next April. So the Net telephony should also wait till then. This would
certainly allow these monopolies to continue their profit-making services at the
cost of consumers who do not have a choice now.

However, technology has
triumphed over the whims and fancies of technocrats anyway. Even international
calls are coming in to the country in a big way through the Net and government
cannot block it with existing technologies. What it can, however, do is to
continue the ban and ensure that ISPs adhere to it on outgoing calls. Similar
attempts by China failed in 1998 and it has been allowed in that country since
1999.

The government should take a
re-look at the expert committee's report. Net telephony should be allowed right
away because the declining revenues to the government's telecom majors would not
be significant. The quality of Net-based voice telephone services is nowhere
near the clarity offered by normal voice-based service providers. The Net has
anyway emerged as a major communication medium and the tech-savvy companies and
individuals are already using the chat mode effectively to keep their
communication costs down.

For businesses and individuals,
Net telephony, in the current technological avatar, will not be a great draw. So
diversion of revenue will not be significant. On the other hand, incoming
Net-based calls are certainly cutting into to the revenues, through the
reduction in overseas voice calls, which the government cannot do much about. It
is better to allow a promising technology as early as possible as the
alternative of banning it is not technologically feasible anyway. At least, the
nation can claim a moral high ground on accepting people friendly technology as
fast as anyone else in the world.