VOIP to be Made Illegal in India

Krish writes "Providers like Skype, Yahoo, Net2phone, Dialpad, etc. will not be able to offer VOIP in India under the proposed govt. clampdown. BPOs and other call centers will face the axe if they use any of the VOIP services provided by the above companies. It is not clear if this clampdown will affect regular home users."

In classic Slashdot form...

[bronzey214]

...I didn't read the article, but... WHY exactly is VOIP so bad that the government needs to ban it??

It's not the phone company

[WhiteDragon]

I expected this was a phone company wanting to maintain their monopoly, but apparently it's the government wanting to capitalize on taxing VOIP services, and American (and other) providers are obviously not going to pay taxes to the government of India.

Re:Network neutrality

[Atlantis-Rising]

This has absolutely nothing to do with network neutrality. This has to do with companies that are doing business with Indian companies not paying Indian taxes.

That is what is making the Indian government pissed. They are not trying to restrict VOIP for the hell of it. They just want what any government wants- to regulate it and tax it, and if they can't, to make it illegal and then extract fines from it.

Sorry, I'm confused.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the linked article it states that goal of the proposed legislation is that call centers are not going to be allowed to continue to use unlicensed VOIP. That is a huge difference from the Slashdot headline claiming that India is banning VOIP.

Not that I've read TFA, but what's "licensed" VOIP?

I don't think any VOIP I've used has ever been "licensed" by anyone.

Re:Just one more effort

[Atlantis-Rising]

I don't think anybody said that. This is, however, not just some random decision by the Indian government to OMG CENSOR TEH INTARWEB TUBES! as the headline pretends.

It's a standard, relatively sane, completely understandable move. Hell, I'm 90% sure the FCC has already done this.

Now, there are a lot of reasons why it's not a good thing. But that doesn't detract from any of the above.

Re:Network neutrality

[Nataku564]

Why not tax instant messaging then ... I mean, thats communicating information across the internet too.

ZOMG! People exchanging ideas! This is bad, they may get smart and overthrow our corrupt government!

VOIP in india

[chrisranjana.com]

The companies will also have to give an undertaking that they will not use the services of unlicensed foreign service providers such as Net2Phone, Vonage, Dialpad, Impetus, Novanet, Euros, Skype and Yahoo.

What is it that prevents the above companies becoming licensed ? and hereby bringing the total license fee payable to the Indian govt and finally bringing joy to all !

Re:In classic Slashdot form...

[Atlantis-Rising]

Then the government throws you in jail until it can forcibly decrypt the datastream, which is, if you're using a good cryptosystem, never.

That's why the british law is on the books- to prevent people from using systems exactly like this. Let's say you're charged with murder, but the evidence is locked up in this cryptostream. You can provide the keys, and have the government jail you for murder, or you can not provide the keys, the government, having no evidence, will drop the murder charge, and slam you with thirty years in prison for impropper use of crypto. You're punished the same either way.

Re:Funny as hell

[ashwinds]

I agree that India does throw up the occassional barriers of trade when it sees some revenue opportunities subverted. the provincial attitude could well be our inheritance from our being a colony of a "first world" nation, the Brits. But I cant understand how a "first world country" can put of barriers of entry of people in the form of demeaning and draconian visa policies and pretend it encourages business. In the garb of protection of intellectual rights, patents have been awarded for even common knowledge and expects other nations to honour it. If all that means being "first world", thank you very much but we like our third world low life as it is. Every country creates barriers to protect and/or propel its own industry - being "third world", "first world", having McDonalds, knowledge of English has nothing to do with it. Titles like technological powerhouse, "first world" etc. are transitional and mean nothing over time - it would be nice, but its a rather small objective.

Re:Slashdot mantra

[antonyb]

How true. If I had mod points I'd mod you up.

Disclaimer: I'm not Indian, but I do live in India. I've run software projects and managed dev teams on most continents, and the team I run here is

1. as creative and able to problem-solve as any other, and
2. far more hard-working than any other place I've worked

Its also a wonderful country to live in; in fact after Australia & Sweden this is the country I've most enjoyed my time in.

I really think that only by spending a few years away from your home country can you begin to gain some kind of perspective about how countries, people & world-views really compare.

The rubbish I read on Slashdot about India and the Indians is the kind of thing I'd expect to see in the Daily Mail.

Re:Oh the irony...

[siufish]

Why should it be otherwise?

Ask yourself honestly: will you make any purchase decision based on whether the call centers are in India or in the US? How many times does it come up in your head when you are picking a VOIP carrier? Shopping for a digital camera? Deciding between a Amex or a Visa card?

Now ask yourself the next question: will you make any purchase decision based on the price? If one VOIP costs $19.99/month and has call centers in India, and another costs $39.99/month and employs only American citizen call agents, which one will you choose?

To businesses, call centers are "cost centers", and accordingly should be as cheap as possible. If they can make the same amount of money with cheaper call centers, they will. If customers don't care, they won't care.

Re:In classic Slashdot form...

[zcat_NZ]

Sure. You have the right to remain silent... and the court has the right to throw you in jail for the rest of your life for contempt of court, and it has done so. The court has shown itself perfectly willing to impose a rolling punishment for contempt- i.e., they throw you in jail, and every year they bring you out and ask you if you're willing to comply. If you're not, they throw you back in.

Just in case anyone doubts the truth of this, Kay Skelton is locked away as I post on a contempt of court charge. Six weeks so far, and will probably be spending Christmas in a cell.

jfgi. [google.com]

Wish we could get some of that in the SCO lawsuit..

Re:Oh the irony...

[arivanov]

That may or may not be the case.

1. The law has been in force for a very long time. Ask anyone who has actually done a proper costing and the legal aspects of outsourcing to India and they will tell you this.

2. The law as such dissallows you to interface into a PBX or anything else which is also connected to the local network over there. In fact as far as the letter of law is concerned this is not that much different from telco regulations in many places around the world.

3. The law does not dissallow you to host as many VOIP phones there as you like provided that they are off your own PBX located outside India and do not interface into the local phone network by any means. So a call center whose guts are located offshore is still fully legal. On(Indian)shore is very murky and it is not something call center outsourcers care about. After all the call center chickens working 10.5 hour shifts are usually not allowed local calls anyway.

4. As far as Yahoo, Dialpad, etc are concerned they are simply required to be registered under the Indian telecoms regs to offer service. This for all practical purposes means that they or their subsidiaries will have to go under majority Indian ownerships. So much for WTO here (actually dunno if they are a member). In fact it is about time someone beat up India in terms of trade treaties and obligations on this.

So overall, this law does not change anything as far as call centers are concerned. The Idian government is not mad to kill their primary GDP source. All it does is to ensure that the near-monopoly of Idian companies on the Idian telecoms market is retained for times to come.

Voice over Frame Relay

[dindi]

When they make Voice Over IP illegal, you can switch to Voice over Frame Relay.

I in fact know a call center that specifically has the technology, to avoid the proposed Voice over IP law in Costa Rica. Usually law makers are shortsighted with technology, so there is always a way around. :)

Re:Oh the irony...

[Shihar]

If a company cares about customer service, they will hire (for their United States customers) support staff that can properly service someone who speaks the US variety of English. It's hard enough convincing Time Warner representatives located just a few miles from here that the problem is on their end. I'd cancel their service if I had to deal with a language barrier too. I guess this customer cares.

While there is some danger is using an Indian call center, it isn't as bad as people make it out to be. It is like out sourcing anywhere. There are some shitty operations that literally pull people off the street and have them babble in thickly Indian accented English that is utterly incomprehensible to your average American. There are also plenty of institution that use people who speak perfectly good English and can tone down their accent to be perfectly understandable to your average American.

I just had experience with just such a call center. I had to call the same damn company three times, and each time got an Indian call center. They were polite, well spoken, and while I could detect a slight accent, it was no harder to understand then if it had been an Alabama call center. Not withstanding the constant fuck-ups of the company unrelated to the call center, their service was fine.