The Hindu : One year on, Net telephony nibbles at `digital divide'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Apr 08, 2003

Science & Tech

Science & Tech

One year on, Net telephony nibbles at `digital divide'

By Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore April 7. The Indian Government's decision a year ago, to legalise `Voice over Internet Protocol' (VOIP) — jargon for the technology that enables telephone calls to be made over the Net — has paid off splendid benefits on two fronts: For the `janatha' this has meant sharply reduced cost of international telephone calls and visible progress in bridging the digital divide; taking the benefits of affordable voice calls and Internet access to the villages. For the burgeoning outsourced `call centre' business — international companies, setting up their customer support centres here — this has provided the technological muscle to compete aggressively for business and make India globally, the number one choice.

The April 1, 2002 notification unshackled dozens of canny Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and enabled them to create a thriving sideline in `prepaid' Net Telephony cards: they typically provide calls to the U.S. at Rs 2 per minute compared to Rs. 5 by conventional International Subscriber Dialing (ISD) technology.

The huge popularity has indirectly driven down the price for all international callers, since the private and public sector providers of traditional telephony have also cut rates to stay in the business. It has also enabled PC owners to make calls to other PCs any where in the world, simply by downloading free Net phone software or using email services like MSN and Yahoo. Today, international calls taking the cheaper Internet Protocol (IP) route are said to account for about six

per cent of all international voice traffic originating from India (estimate by `iLocus' quoted in `Business Standard') and this is expected to rise 10 fold, within four years. The prospect is also bright for the `back room boys' — those who provide the equipment that enables enterprises or service providers to create their own IP networks.

According to Aditya Sapru of the market researchers Frost and Sullivan, migration to Internet- based `convergence' services — a mix of voice, data, sound and picture — is becoming so pervasive that by 2008, more traffic will move on IP systems than on the conventional telephone networks which are somewhat dismissively being called POTS — Plain Old Telephone System. He was speaking here today at a seminar on IP Telephony opportunities organised jointly by Tata Telecom and Avaya, a global leader in Net-based telephone technology. Mr Sapru said it is time to forget the old joke that VOIP in India stood for Voice Over Internal Politics — the tussle between staff entrenched in a company's separate departments that handled data and voice applications. Avaya's U.S.-based Convergence Strategist Lawrence Byrd observed that many Indian Call Centre were technologically ahead of similar facilities in the West, because the competitive environment drove them to adapt internet-based voice and data networks from day one. This would soon enable them to create `Virtual' call centres — a 100-seat centre would have very little centralised manpower; most of the personnel would operate from their homes and would be seamlessly connected into the grid.

Away from the metro-based happy hunting grounds for such technology aimed at small and large enterprises, Internet-based telephony has also opened up a new pathway to bridge the urban-rural divide. Researchers at the Kanpur-Lucknow Lab of Media Labs Asia, based at IIT Kanpur, have

created "Infothela" — a mobile pedal-driven unit geared to bring the benefits of Internet, telephones and fax to villages where there is be no land telephone and no electricity. The rickshaw-mounted PC is driven by a bank of batteries, which are charged by the dynamo action of the pedal. And to provide the internet connection, Media Labs Asia has created a 75 km long corridor between Kanpur and Lucknow using the WiFi technology which was also unlicensed by the Government in recent months. This will be an experiment that will be watched with interest the world over, because Wireless Internet working to the 802.11 standard, has been designed to operate over short distances of less than 100 metres. Media Lab's Indian researchers have however `stretched' this to 35 kms with a series of repeaters and sharply focused antennas.

If they do succeed it will be one of the most exciting developments to emerge from this country in the Internet arena - a case of truly `appropriate technology'. (Details of the Media Labs Infothela project can be found at www.iitk.ac.in/ MLasia/infothela.htm.)

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One year on, Net telephony nibbles at `digital divide'