cyberwiz said:
You don’t seem to get the rationale. When you are an Indian ITSP’s (i.e. ISP+ITSP) even if you opt to use a legal gateway in Singapore, the government cannot shut down or regulate the gateway in Singapore but it can shut you down.
On the assumption that it is an Indian registered company only. What if the company is registered in some other country (which is cheap enough to do)?
Nothing stopping any of the thousands of companies NOT registered in India from offering VOIP services to an Indian resident which just happens to allow said resident to call a phone number with the +91 country code.
cyberwiz said:
This is something that can very well be regulated by the Indian Government because you are in India and licensed by the Indian Government. Now if Skype is doing the same thing and it cannot be regulated because of a “jurisdiction” issue, it doesn’t mean that 1) Skype becomes legal 2) The Indian ITSP’s are allowed to do this as well.
1. And yet it's not blocked.
2. And yet they do.
cyberwiz said:
For violating the law, you have got the facts wrong, none of the Indian registered VoIP operators are offering PSTN connectivity to India, if you do so on the basis of your present ISP license, you can be taken to court/authorities and the service shut down.
I am aware of what would happen if I, as a licensee, were to offer this type of service WITHIN INDIA (but not excluding the possibility of a PSTN changeover outside of India in order to not directly contravene the law) BUT you're missing my point: none of these VOIP operators HAVE ISP licenses; therefore they are not bound by those terms.
HOWEVER
If I start a company, put a SIP server in a data centre and connect it to the Internet, I can do that - it's like having a big PBX system - but none of the licensed NLD operators CAN or WILL connect to me directly without the requisite license, that is, an NLD license. To solve this problem I can buy wholesale trunks to Singapore and changeover there and this will work and there is nothing stopping me from doing that BUT at no point is the ISP license actually involved because no such license is really required to do that.
cyberwiz said:
Incorrect. Calls by unlicensed VoIP operators to India are at par or in some cases even lesser than the STD rate, there is revenue loss because the traffic meant for the licensed operator is diverted to the unlicensed operator and he is profiting from it rather than the licensed operator while enjoying as you say “jurisdictional” immunity.
Again incorrect, there are several unlicensed providers below the 80 P mark. Search again.
Or you could just cite an example.
There are no licensed VOIP operators *in India* because there is no such license strictly for VOIP (without such a service being bundled in with ISP, NLD, ILD or BPO licenses) - therefore the question of licensed versus unlicensed doesn't really exist: strictly speaking, every VOIP provider on the planet would be "unlicensed" in India, bar all the Indian telcos.
cyberwiz said:
Initially no VoIP was allowed in India, then the govt. allowed the existing ISP’s to offer (restricted) VoIP services by paying license fees and amending the ISP agreement, this was in 2002. Then new licensing norms were framed (in 2007) wherein the ISP’s were allowed the ITSP license (or allowed to offer telephony) in the form of a clause in the ISP agreement itself. The annual license fees that the ITSP has to pay for internet telephony is 6% of AGR (Adjusted Gross Revenue) in addition to the initial ISP license fee. Now do the unlicensed operators pay any of this? Obviously not, causing loss to the govt. and the licensed operators.
That's not entirely accurate either. Because even if the handover happens outside of India, only a licensed ILD operator can bring the traffic back in to India. That ILD operator is charging some wholesale rate to the VOIP provider for the Singapore > India PSTN link, and the government is getting it's percentage from that.
There is no question about where the traffic originates from because, obviously, the only way for the traffic to get from India to Singapore is via an ISP (and in many cases, 2 or even 3 ISPs before it hits the International links), all of which are paying a percentage of their revenue to the
DoT as well. So rather than no cut, it's more a case of double-dipping!
cyberwiz said:
Here is what you said, doesn’t seem from any angle that you are speaking for yourself, infact you seem to be vouching/standing up for Skype.
I know what I said, however you have not understood the context in which it was said. In this case I *am* somewhat defending Skype by saying that it is not committing a crime under Indian law by allowing calls from it's software to an Indian number if the user just happens to be within India. I don't think there is a *reasonable* way for Skype to sit there determining that calls made from within India on an Indian IP address should or should not be able to call the International prefix +91. I'm not saying it's impossible, but not reasonable - and I have a feeling that Skype would die fairly quickly were it to bow down and make such determinations - soon you'd see censorship by nation and the only countries you'd be allowed to call would be those with with India is super friendly... so the US, UK and maybe the rest of the Commonwealth... not to mention other governments following suit and prohibiting the exchange of traffic between this country and that country... clearly not in Skype's best interest as a company and not in any consumer's best interest either.
cyberwiz said:
Earlier you were certain that they were terminating outside India and coming in legally, now it varies for call to call?
It seems you are simply misinterpreting what I said. Sometimes you get some code flash up on your phone which might be like +4404 (just that, no additional numbers, it's not a real telephone number). Other times you might just get zeroes. Other times something else altogether. The variation in the code is what I mean by "varies from call to call" and depends entirely on which wholesale trunk is being used for the call at that given moment - I am not making any mention of the location of the server.
cyberwiz said:
Very simple answer to that.
1. What Is skype offering? a service that only licensed ISP’s can provide so even though skype is not an ISP but if it to come to India and setup servers here what would it need to be allowed to operate legally ? an ISP license, pretty obvious.
No, it wouldn't even need that, otherwise every company with a PBX would require an ISP license. Were Skype to come to India and plug in it's own servers here
cyberwiz said:
2. As mentioned several times before -- taking a VoIP call from within India and routing it over a PSTN legal gateway, even for example in Singapore is not legal if the call ends back in India on a PSTN/PLMN. In totality the call is illegal. Skype –Skype client call is legal if call terminates abroad. Skype call from abroad to India again legal, if routed appropriately, but Skype call from within India to PSTN within India, not allowed.
It's just not. But despite what I've typed in posts gone by you're happy to go around and around in circles.
cyberwiz said:
Drop in an email to DoT and ask them.
Why do that when I have a walking-talking license guru working for me?
cyberwiz said:
Yes this is not allowed. I cant call from my Vonage box or any other co’s ATA in India to the PSTN/PLMN of India bypassing my Landline or my mobile for reasons which I have mentioned several times now. If you used the unlicensed operators it would actually be a cheaper way to go
VoIP-PSTN within India illegal, mentioning for the umpteenth time. Fact its being done doesn’t make it legal.
The key is WHERE the handover happens, otherwise every VOIP call terminating in India would be illegal. End of story. You are directly comparing the situation of one of these companies tothat an entity registered under the companies act of 1956. They are not one and the same. Indian companies have to obey the laws of the land.
A company (whether Vonage or Skype or other) that is not registered in India cannot be subjected to or bound by the licensing of this country can not be held to the terms and conditions of that license: it is the responsibility of the ILD operator bringing the call back to India to have the requisite agreements with the operators around the world (or trunk wholesalers as the case may be) to kind of "complete the chain" and provide the services necessary for a call to be made, which will include everything from the appropriate routing of the call to the CLID.
Changing the example from Skype to Vonage, say, it's likely that their nearest server, being a US-centric service, is in California. As such, a Vonage call from India to say, some BSNL India landline, is going to go as data to the US and then either be routed to the nearest point of interconnection (which may also be in California, it may be in Singapore, who knows). From that point of interconnection it will go on some lower-than-toll trunk back to India over the standard PSTN network.
Who is carrying the traffic from (Singapore or US)? Most likely that's BSNL themselves, and between BSNL and Vonage, there is probably some other provider - AT&T, Verizon, someone like that. So when it comes down to it: Does BSNL know that the call originated in India as a data packet on some ISP? No. Can they? No.
So what would the solution be? Block all calls from AT&T/Verizon/whoever happens to connect to Vonage's backend? I seriously doubt it.
But wait!
There's another potential situation in a case like this: Vonage to SkypeIn or some other service. This has even less grey area because both services - despite having standards-compliant phone numbers and an actual telephone involved - are still just VOIP to VOIP calls and/or VOIP to VOIP via their respective analogue telephone adapters, so at the end of the day isn't significantly different from a Skype-Skype call, even if maybe, somewhere, some portion of the call does traverse the PSTN network (outside of India, of course)
mehrotra.akash said:
Is it just me, or is this thread turning into one of the Hayai threads with massive posts?
You know, the one where someone posts something, someone else tears it apart point by point, the torn apart post is then defended by the OP by tearing the response apart and the cycle continues till the thread is closed or someone gives up out of sheer exhaustion
I don't believe there are any reference to Hayai except this post.
