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Around Two years ago, India allowed VOIP licenses to offer unrestricted internet telephony, but none of the mobile operators have done so far, since they are afraid VoIP would cut their profits and impact overall revenues.
However with this new annoucement to open VOIP to ISP, it will be a different ballgame.The Mobile operators will be forced to join the arena since those who are left out would probably loose out forever. Since ISP’s have strong hold in the market now, they can push VOIP services as part of their broadband packages which can make life even more difficult for telecom operators. VoIP
We are expecting to see Vodafone and Bharati to launch VOIP services first. There were strong rumous that Bharati is going to launch Advertisement based Free Calls Service in India, I thought this was done in Pilot Phases. In simple words, our International calls to India will be lot cheaper. We expect this to be around 50 paise (about 1.2 USD cents). The actual termination cost could be a bit more, but provider like Reliance/Bharati/VSNL can do E1 rates for as low as 25-40 paise (lower than 1 cnets per minute). This would be huge for everyone who wants to make cheap international calls to India. VOIP Providers will enjoy better rates and with increasing competition there will be more impressive deals available in the market.We are just waiting for Govertment to start providing these Licenses to ISP and Telecom operators. We are expecting this to actually take effect by end of this year or first half of 2009.
In the present fast growing industry every company is making effort towards globalization and believes that giving faster and better support to the customers can attain globalization and VOIP is one of the products. VoIP is helping companies in taking their steps towards globalization. VoIP solutions offered by Adiance Technologies are an open source ready to be deployed for any VoIP based service provider. Adiance claims to have an entire in-house VoIP team set u which has been continuously doing research activities and developing niche technologies to provide advance solutions to the market.
“Reliance Communications (RCom) and Microsoft announced a strategic partnership to provide Internet protocol television (IPTV) services whereby RCom will invest $500 million as licence fee for the software, and spend an additional $500 million in setting up the IPTV infrastructure in the country. The companies have been working on the project since 2003.RCom has been testing IPTV in close to 20,000 households in Mumbai and Delhi. IPTV provides for two-way interactive communication. It allows consumers to watch TV while using the telephone line and broadband Internet connection.”
Truphone today announced Truphone Out+, a new feature that enables free and VoIP-rate calls to be made from a customer’s existing phone number. Truphone Out+ also brings carrier pre-select to Truphone customers, ensuring free Truphone-to-Truphone calls are set up whenever possibie.
Truphone Out is accessible to new customers from countries where Truphone does not yet provide local mobile numbers. Currently this means countries outside of the UK and USA. For these new customers Truphone Out+ means that a customer’s existing phone number is now displayed as their ‘calling line identification’ (CLI) when they make a Truphone call. Carrier pre-select is achieved transparently: when a Truphone call is made the Truphone servers recognise if the ‘ordinary’ telephone number being called is linked to a Truphone account. If the destination user is online, a free Truphone-to-Truphone call is setup.
VoIP in India
Although, operators like BSNL and MTNL are opening up to embrace VoIP, the tax and fee structure required by TRAI and operators make it difficult to provide VoIP services at a competitive rate. For e.g. DoT charges an additional 12.5% service tax on total charges which is relatively very high when compared around the world, makes it difficult for an Indian company to really provide world-class service at a competitive pricing, especially when a user have alternate option. What would DoT do if user directly buys credit from companies operating in US/Europe which will turn out to be lot cheaper compared to buying from India when 12.5% service tax is added ?images1.jpg
To make VoIP really “affordable” for companies established in India, a revolution similar to the celluar revolution in India - ‘world’s best per min charges’ - is necessary. From a technical point of view, there are companies in India which can claim a stake to provide complete infrastructure which is the best amongst the world. It is interesting to know that while most companies in world like Gtalk, Skype, or TringMe provide inter-user VoIP communication for free, BSNL/MTNL charges 10 paise per user-to-user VoIP minute (PC-to-PC) which is extremely uncompetitive.
India is amongst the top 5 counties in the world to use Smartphones. Hence, if done well, Mobile VoIP can become an extremely affordable, lucrative and convenient technology in India. Companies like TringMe are bringing in Mobile VoIP support for Smartphones so that one can use VoIP during travelling or on road and not just when one is in front of a PC. This has the potential to change the market dynamics in countries like India andChina where mobile device penetration carries a huge momentum.