Bharti Telenet Ltd., Bhopal-CommWorks 8210 UMS for Telco Voice/Fax Mail and Migration to Enhanced IP Services |
At the recent ITU World Policy Forum on IP Telephony, Yoshio Utsumi, ITU
secretary-general, raised three key questions. Why do we need a new network to
carry telephone calls when we already have one — the public switched telephone
network (PSTN) — which does the job very well indeed? What does IP Telephony
mean for developing countries? Why the big fuss over a new technology, which
provides what is essentially an old service? These questions concern the whole
world. But let us for the moment forget the world and confine them to India.
Utsumi himself had the answers. He underlined that IP-based networks
represent a significant new opportunity for ITU members and are already an
important part of the emerging new market environment in terms of volume of
traffic carried and level of investment committed. "From a technical
perspective, IP-based networks hold the promise of providing multimedia
telecommunication services and new applications, merging voice and data. From an
economic perspective, the use of IP-based networks promises to reduce prices for
consumers, and the costs of market entry for operators, especially for
long-distance and international calls," he added.
Simply put, this is the gist of what IP telephony would mean to a developing
country like India. However, unlike in countries like US or China where IP
Telephony evolved liberally, or otherwise, over a period of time, a lot of
groundwork would be needed in India, both by the government and the service
providers, before a switch over to packet-based telephony. A migration would
also mean a disruption of the existing telecommunication model. The silver
lining, nonetheless, is that India has before it, numerous IP telephony models
from different countries to take lessons from.
Why does India need IP Telephony?
Drop the word IP telephony and the first thing that comes to mind is cheaper
voice calls. Very few of us realize that IP telephony is not just about
substantial reduction in long distance international or domestic voice call
costs, it is also about choice and availability of new services. Besides, IP
telephony, with low entrance cost for operators, could also encourage new
investments in the telephony business. This is something that the country
desperately needs, to tide over its notoriously low telephone penetration
levels.
"A developing country like ours definitely requires cost effective
communication. The first application I could think of is mass communication
booths for VoIP calls & Internet access. Closer home, Thailand has done just
that," says Himanshu Goel of 3Com India Limited. "Aren’t we ready
for this since most of us still think ten times before making a long distance
call?" he asks.
Then it is also about the availability of services and their easy
accessibility by a larger number of people. In a country with an installed base
of just 5 million PCs, would it not be prudent to allow people to send or
receive any type of message without owning a PC?
"With the availability of technology to provision voice and data
networks in a single infrastructure, developed and developing countries have
clearly seen the business advantages of using the technology which benefits its
people. And what benefits people cannot be a wrong decision," asserts SV
Ramana, country manager, technical sales, Cisco India
Deregulations First
As IP telephony gathers steam and moves from being an ‘emerging’ to an
‘inevitable’ technology and service, the first thing India would need to do
is to do away with the regulations that (though not prohibiting licensed voice
service providers from opting for VoIP-based telephony) disallow Internet
telephony, the other form of IP telephony. To again paraphrase Utsumi,
telecommunications regulations may need to be reviewed in the light of the
opportunities opened up and the challenges posed by IP Telephony. In other
words, the regulations must encourage the most dominating feature of IP
telephony i.e. the convergence of voice, data and video networks. The
regulations must also allow service providers, be it the traditional telcos or
ISPs, to offer converged services.