The Internet is a global network of close to 100 million
people. It provides a vast range of telecommunication services, including electronic
mail, the World Wide Web, and more recently, telephony. With appropriate software
that can be downloaded free, users who are logged onto the Internet can talk to
each other anywhere in the world at no additional cost. Recently, some companies
have started services that allow such users to even talk to people who do not
have an Internet connection, but only a regular phone, at a cost far below regular
long-distance charges. How is this possible? Telecommunications
multinationals (telcos), which so far have often monopolized services in their
own countries, have been charging their customers very high rates for international
telephony. Internet telephony is a lot cheaper, because it does not incur many
costs that the telcos do. These include marketing, metering, billing and collecting
from their customers, which add a huge overhead. Also, they use expensive switches,
which have been programmed independently at great cost by each supplier.
As against
this, the Internet runs on software that is largely free - many universities,
research institutions, companies and individuals have incurred the costs of developing
it on their own. Until recently, most telcos have enjoyed the benefits of monopoly
pricing. In India, they still do. A complaint to the VSNL Help Desk, elicited
the following one-line response: "sir, this site is not accessible from vsnl."
When asked why, and under which power and authority access to the Vocaltec site
had been blocked, VSNL's manager in charge of Internet services, Neeraj Sonker,
also provided a one-line reply, "As part of contract terms and conditions,
we don't encourage voice over ip." IP stands for Internet Protocol. In other
words, Mr. Sonker seems to suggest that VSNL have a problem with voice in any
form carried over the Internet. No response has been received from VSNL to the
following request, which seeks to determine the scope of VSNL's ban.
