Gujarat now Connected to Internet Telephony

It's a state with the largest US connection. Not in terms of business
partners but blood relations. More Gujaratis stay in the US than any other
community. Many of them were paying high rates to talk to their siblings and in
the recent months saw a major cost reduction. But they are in for a major
changeover with Internet telephony a possibility now. One of the leading
Internet service providers, IceNet has launched IceTel, its premium voice over
Internet protocol services in Gujarat. IceNet has tied up with Singapore based
Mediaring, one of the world's leading netphony providers to provide clear
transmission of voice over public Internet. "This is something we have been
waiting for," a beamed Chirag Mehta, CEO of IceNet told CNS.

IceNet also counts to a number of ISPs which were searching for value added
services not to make profits but to survive. Though strong lobbies worked
against granting such a move, public interest came first, said Mehta. Mehta
pulled statistics from statistics to show how calls from US to India were more
than triple to Indians calling to US or any other country. At the moment, 2
billion minutes of telephone traffic in incoming to India and only one fourth of
that goes out of India each month. IceNet will soon launch pre-paid cards of
100, 250, 500 and 1000 denominations to reduce this trend The DOT charges Rs 40
per minute to a US call and IceNet will charge Rs 6 instead. "The asymmetry
of prices pushed asymmetry of traffic. Now we will reverse the trend," he
said. Vishnu Varshney, Managing Director of Gujarat Venture Finance Limited, one
of the major venture capitalists of Gujarat explained that the Internet
telephony will increase the tele-density. One percent of tele-density makes
three precent GDP growth, Mehta added.

He observed that he expects Rs 40 crore market at the initial stages which
could grown up to 100 crores in two years. IceNet is also set to launch own
Cyber Calling Centres all over the state, fifty to start with.

It will also help cyber cafes to turn into voice cafes by providing technical
help in sound proof seamless environment for bigger groups to visit. The cyber
calling centres will have high quality H.323 voice media gateways from mediaring.
The government, while offering the sop to the ISPs, has also opened opportunity
for corporates having branches in different parts of the country to be hooked on
to voice through Internet backbone