TRAI has allowed ISP (Internet Service Providers) to offer unrestricted internet telephony services in India. What this essentially means is that users will be able to call (dial) to mobiles and landline phones in India from their computers. Under existing norms, a voice call can travel between two computers but not from a computer to a mobile or a fixed phone.

As per the TRAI recommendations, the STD service providers would be connected to ISPs through public internet for the purpose and the two service providers would have mutual agreement for the same.

The Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), a technical arm of Department of Telecom, will work out the number plan for the ISPs to enable them to offer telephone services. “Telephone numbers from identified blocks shall be allocated to ISPs, Unified Access Service Providers, Basic Service Providers and Cellular Mobile Service Providers for internet telephony,” TRAI said.

With a view to make internet telephony secure, TRAI said, all ISPs interested to provide unrestricted internet telephony would have to install “Lawful Interception” equipments.

I believe that this will be more beneficial to corporate customers than to normal users (retail customers) like us. Reasons:

• India has low internet penetration with only 1.1 crore connections with even lesser number of broadband connections.
• Net speed of 256kbps is classified as broadband in India, which is not sufficient for decent voice clarity.
• Even after having a decent broadband connection, calls from PC to mobiles/fixed phones won’t be free. Users will definitely be charged per call.
• STD Call rates are already very low in India. In fact call rates are so low that even ISPs won’t be able to lower them significantly. Almost all the mobile operators now have plans where STD rates are same as Local rates.
• It is always convenient to call from a phone or mobile than to switch on you PC, connect to internet and then dial the number.

For corporate customers, where the volume of calls is really high this is definitely a boon because they can now deploy VOIP Phones over their Wide Area Networks and can virtually run their internal phone usage for free, independent of the phone service providers. BPO and IT companies will really benefit from this. This will bring in substantial cost savings for these companies. “This is a welcome step particularly for the Indian IT-BPO industry,” said the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or NASSCOM.

But this will mean a loss in revenues for the telecom operators and it will definitely not be welcomed by them. But I believe that they should have a long term perspective of the view. Rather than opposing this they should provide better broadband internet connectivity to the users. In fact as I see the way forward will be rolling out of WiMAX services in coming years, with wi fi enabled mobiles and voice communication moving over from switching networks to IP (internet) networks.

This is a welcome recommendation from TRAI and lets hope government approves it fast.