Montek group in favour of legalising Net telephony

The group on information technology and telecommunications headed by Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha will take the final decision on whether the issue should be sent to the Cabinet for a formal clearance and what the modalities for this would be.

According to all indications available, the Government has recognised the fact that allowing Internet telephony to happen legally may be a better option to regulate the market rather than closing their eyes to this technical reality which is illegally already happening in the marketplace.

In fact, Minister of State for Communications, Tapan Sikdar, has already hinted that such a decision on the part of the Government will be taken sooner than later.

However, the basic telecom operators have sought that a level playing field should be ensured for them before such a clearance is given to ISPs. Currently, carrying voice on a telephone line requires a licence from the Government. This may be in the form of the cellphone licence or the normal landline phone licence.

Now, ISPs would use the normal landline phone lines to provide Internet services, which falls in the domain of the basic service providers for which these basic operators pay a licence fee to the Government. Once ISPs are also allowed to do telephony, the basic operators have demanded, they also should be required to pay a licence fee to the Government, the same as basic telecom operators. Also, ISPs wanting to get into Internet telephony, should mandatorily have to get a licence from the Government, the basic operators have demanded.

The Government will have to resolve these vexed issues before it can allow Internet telephony.