Source: voipcentral.org

Better late than never.The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has finally taken a very tough stand on the unlicensed VoIP service providers who offer their voice services through the cyber cafes in the country.

The TRI has banned the VoIP services offered by many cyber cafes and asserted that the incumbent Omantel has the legal right to provide IP telephony services in the country.

The violation of TRI ruling may force the caf operators to pay a fine of upto $1, 30,000 or two years in prison.

The decision to ban unlicensed VoIP services has been enforced in the event of increasing number of foreign companies offering their free or low cost VoIP services through cyber cafes.

Earlier, the government of India has decided to ban unlicensed VoIP services of Skype, Vonage, Yahoo!, Net2Phone, Dialpad, Impetus, Novanet and Euros. It has also ruled that the BPOs and other call centers using VoIP services of unlicensed service providers will face clampdown.

Source: voipcentral.org

The government of India has decided to ban illegal VoIP services operating in the country. The BPOs and other call centers using VoIP services of unlicensed service providers will face clampdown.

The Department of Telecommunication (DoT) will very soon come up with stringent rules and regulations to block the illegal internet telephony services that kill government revenue.

An Economictimes report explains the telecom department is introducing a provision that compels the ITes companies to furnish the names of authorized service providers from whom bandwidth and internet minutes have taken.

The companies must also submit an undertaking that they will not use the services of unlicensed service providers including Skype, Vonage, Yahoo!, Net2Phone, Dialpad, Impetus, Novanet and Euros.

According to DoT, the above-unlicensed service providers offer 30 million minutes of IP telephony services every month to corporate sectors, call centers and BPOs in India. They do not pay 12 percent service tax and six percent of revenue share. For which, the government is losing revenue share on internet telephony.

If the rules were implemented, then the global giants like Skype, Yahoo!, Vonage, Net2Phone, Dialpad , Impetus, Novanet and Euros would no longer run their operation in Indian territory.

Source: voipcentral.org

Acknowledging India as a potential market for VoIP, Nortel has decided to establish a global Network Management Centre (NMC) in Delhi.

The Delhi centre would be third major NMC of Nortel. The first two centers are located in London and California. The Delhi NMC is also Nortels first major VoIP network centre in Asia.

Canada-based VoIP outfit has reached out a five-year agreement with Indian mobile service provider Bharti Airtel. Under the agreement, Nortel would host Airtels contact centre and interactive voice response services in several languages.

Ravi Chauhan, Nortel Indias Managing Director explained,

we are alone in offering an end-to-end solution for telecom network management, including the industry’s first real time support for VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephony with voice quality.

Nortel will start trials this month in the Delhi and Gurgaon areas for fixed WiMax broadband Internet.

With more than 100 million mobile phone subscribers, India is now a potential VoIP market. It is the fifth largest country in the world in terms of mobile phone subscribers.

Source: voipcentral.org

Genius is really genius. The Taiwan-based company has mastered a latest VoIP mouse that supports up to six Instant Messages from Skype, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, QQ and AIM and combines them into a single window.

Dubbed as Genius Navigator 380, the latest mouse has a different look and unique style. It integrates VoIP phone functions into a mouse.

It contains seven buttons for the basic phone functions such as Phone on/off, List up/List down, Volume up/down and so on. At the same time, you can take it with your notebook anywhere. Featuring a 1200 dpi optical engine, the phone will alert you for the incoming call.

Sandeep Ramani, country manager, KYE Systems (India), explains,

With the unveiling of this futuristic product ,Genius Navigator 380, I hope Genius, will go a long way to mark an era of innovative products and will accentuate particularly on nextgen products in future also. In a nut shell, this revolutionary device is an absolute necessity for a frequent traveller to reduce one’s burden and increase work efficiency.

The price of Navigator 380 is just of Rs 1,850. It is now available in India.

Source: voipcentral.org

The government of India has permitted California-based Internet giant Yahoo! to offer VoIP services for the Indian users of its Instant Messenger.

Although, Yahoo! has a strong base in India for its enormous web-based services like mail, searching and portals through its Yahoo! India, the company has decided to form a special company, Yahoo Internet Communication India to bring VoIP services, a spokesperson of Yahoo! India explained.

India is now a potential market for VoIP. With large numbers of Indians are living abroad, their families and relatives are keen to keep touch with them through VoIP service as it offers them free or inexpensive international call facilities.

On the other hand, India has experienced mushrooming growth in the number of Internet users. As per the latest count, the total number of online users in India is 37 million and the number will go on increasing in the coming days.

What is interesting to note the fact that the number of active users (people who use Internet at least once in a month) has touched to 25 million in September from 21.1 million in March 2006.

Therefore, the major Internet service providers are now betting on India for VoIP revenue. Yahoo! is the frontrunner of them. Like Yahoo, anther broadband giant AOL has also decided to launch its VoIP services and Instant Messaging in India.

Via:[Infoworld]

Source: voipcentral.org

Ethiopia will become the first country to be benefited from Indias dream project in Africa known as the Pan African e-Network which will dispense benefits of tele-education and tele-medicine to 53 African Union nations.

The Pan Africa e-Network is the brainchild of current scientist President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam that aims at bridging the digital divide and accelerate development throughout Africa.

This includes setting up a VVIP network that will network the presidents of all the 53 African countries who will have a ready access to their counterparts through videoconferencing and VoIP facilities.

On this, India’s executing agency of the project - Telecommunications Consultants (India) Limited (TCIL) signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ethiopian Information and Communication Technology Development Agency (EICTDA) yesterday to implement the pilot project for tele-education and tele-medicine.

The pilot project which will be fully funded by the Indian government is estimated to cost USD 2.1 million.

A press release by the Indian embassy in Ethiopia said;

Ethiopia will be the first beneficiary of the Pan-African e-Network Project as it is the headquarters of African Union with the necessary infrastructure, and is keen for its early implementation.

The nodal centre for tele-education will be Addis Ababa, and for tele-medicine it will be Black Lion Hospital. These nodal centers will be initially connected to remote centers in Adama University and Adama Medical College in Nazareth respectively with the possibility to add other centers later on.

The TCIL is executing the project in collaboration with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

The total cost of the complete project is estimated to be 63.7 million US dollars. This will be funded by the Indian external affairs ministry under its Aid-to-Africa Budget program is likely to become operational by 2007.

Via: newKerala