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Net Telephony not to Lower your STD Bills
(Times of India, 12th November 2005)
If you are too excited over government’s allowing landline firms like Bharti and MTNL to offer Internet telephony within India don’t be. Telecom experts say that it won’t make too much difference to your STD bills.
They said opening up of domestic Net telephony has come at least two years late. Reason : STD rates have fallen so drastically over past couple of years that the tariff difference that Net telephony (as against the circuit switched landlines that we have at home) offered a few years ago, is no longer possible.
A Delhi-Mumbai call already costs about Rs. 2.40 a minute. In certain cases, it is even less. After the government’s aggressive opening up of the long distance (STD/ ISD) sector on Thursday, and its plan to introduce OneIndia plan by January there could be flat rate of Rs. 1.50 or lower for STD calls across the country.
This situation is expected to leave little margin for companies to offer any major price differential between regular STD calls and domestic Internet telephony calls.
There is nothing much to get very excited about this development, said Badri Agarwar, president of Bharti’s landline and broadband business. At the most the net cost difference to an operator (and hence to the customer) could be just about 10-15%.
Jasjit Sawhney of Net4India, which offers Internet telephony service for international calls, was of the view that the development might not be attractive enough for his company to look to STD licence. Sawhney said new norms might encourage Net4India to seek ISD licence, an area where there is till a big tarrif difference between circuit switched and Internet telephony. For instance, a call from Bharti or MTNL landline phone costs Rs. 7.20 a minute, but on Net4India’s Net calling card it costs around Rs. 3.
Experts say that even in this case the big difference is more on account of revenue share fee, access deficit charge and taxes and not because of use of technology or Internet Protocol.
New STD/ ISD norms seek to impose 6% revenue-share fee on ISPs (Internet Service Providers) for providing international Internet Telephony.
Said Kobita Desai of Gartner, “Freeing up of domestic Internet telephony a few years ago, when STD call rates were about Rs. 9 would have had a stronger impact.
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