Net Telephony application service providers eye Indian market

BANGALORE: The legalizing or opening of Internet Telephony in India from

April 1st 2002, marked the beginning of increase in communication between India

and the outside world. Not far from privatizing the International Long Distance

service, the Indian government allowed ISPs to offer Internet Telephony either

PC to PC or PC to phone between India and the other countries. IDC expects the

IP telephony market to grow at a CAGR of 119 per cent to touch Rs 13,000 crore

by 2005.

Although the market has shown a great deal of interest only a couple of

licenses has been awarded. Satyam Infoway has started offering the service on a

trial basis in some cyber cafes across the country. Whether the market matures

to exploit the opportunity with sheer number of users increasing is yet to be

seen. However this has opened gates for application service providers such as

www.dialpad.com, www.mediaring.com, www.net2phone.com, www.go2call.com,

www.pc2call.com to eye the Indian market.

Preliminary reports confirm some of the application service providers mulling

or in final stages of signing partnerships with ISPs in India. Reports reveal

that while Indian ISP Caltiger has tied up with Net2Phone, Net4India has tied up

with Delta 3, and IceNet has tied up with MediaRing.

While the calls charged by these service providers is pegged at anywhere

between 3.9 cents to 5 cents per minute for a call from India to the US, Sify

has announced a price tag of Rs 7 per minute. The average charge by other ISPs

is also expected to be around Rs 8 per minute to the US.

"Our retail rate today for calls to India from any PC outside India is

49 cents. However, the government does not allow PC-to-phone calls to complete

intra-country. In general, our PC-to-phone rates are extremely discounted from

PSTN. The final rate is determined by the ISP," Net2Phone’s Corporate

Communications, VP, Sarah Hofstetter.