Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Saturday, Mar 23, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Saturday, Mar 23, 2002 |
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Info-Tech
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ISPs `Net telephony norms offer level field' Our Bureau
NEW DELHI, March 22 INTERNET service and solutions provider (ISP), Net4India, has welcomed the Internet telephony guidelines issued by the Department of Telecommunciations (DoT) on Thursday. The ISP, whose application for international long distance licence is pending with the DoT, expects the letter of intent to be offered in three weeks' time. Another eight weeks, and it will be all set to offer international services at comparatively much lower rates than those offered by the switched networks. Mr Jasjit Sawheny, CEO, Net4India told Business Line, the company had already started talks with prospective international telecom carriers as strategic partners for call origination and termination. The company, he noted, planned to invest Rs 250 crore over the next two years for offering ILD services in the market. He said that the international voice market in India was around 2.6 billion minutes currently and was expected to grow exponentially with the introduction of competition. Mr Sawhney said that at a time when the capital markets were drying up and making it difficult for telecom companies to raise money to build new infrastructure, the significantly lower costs of IP telephony made it a better alternative. Although he would have wished guidelines did not ban PC to phone service within the country, he noted that it was done to protect the basic service operators who would have been badly hit. Right now, the guidelines ensured that everyone could compete on a level playing field, he said. Reacting to the guidelines, Mr R. Ramaraj, Managing Director & CEO, Satyam Infoway Ltd, another city-based ISP, the guidelines on Net telephony are welcome and signal a new era of telecom services in India. For they will result in greater access to affordable long distance telephone services for the common man through healthy competition with multiple choices with quality services with much lower prices. ``For ISPs this is a major shot in the arm, for from a 200 per cent growth in the early years, growth had tapered off to practically no growth at all. This will ensure greater and increasing usage with more users coming on and existing users spending more time on the Internet,'' he said. Mr Ramraj added, ``The Internet needs to become ubiquitous for its true potential to be realised, and Internet telephony is a strong reason for many more consumers to turn to it. In terms of revenues, they will be incremental but will add to potential revenue streams. It must be remembered that PC-to-PC calls are essentially free and do not represent a revenue source. Overall, it will bring some excitement back to the Internet sector.''
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