mgcarley
Founder, Hayai Broadband
The legal situation concerning VOIP in India leaves us in a tricky predicament.
Basically, we are allowed to:
Allow direct dialling to International Destinations
Allow VOIP-VOIP communications between customers
And we are not allowed to:
Have phone numbers that adhere to the International Numbering Specifications under the Indian country code - though providing customers with a US/UK/NZ/whatever number is fine.
Allow caller ID to display an Indian phone number when someone does call India from one of our lines.
As such, I've been trying to figure out how can we allow incoming calls from landlines and mobiles at standard rates.
Incoming - India:
One thought has been to rent a standard phone line with sufficient capacity to handle all the simultaneous incoming calls (like your average corporate) and then assign each customer an "extension".
From what I can ascertain this is allowed, but may be sitting in a grey area legally speaking since I think this may be allowed for corporates for internal communication and whatnot - as such, you might end up dialling (from abroad) +91 22 3456-7890 ... 987654321 (where 987654321 is the non-geographic customer number we assign), or from India, dial 022 3456-7890 ... 987654321.
Incoming - International:
We can easily assign you a phone number in another country for whatever it costs per month from whichever provider we choose. As a baseline, a New Zealand geographic landline number retails for about NZD$7 (Rs240) per month, and is usually one of those destinations included in the 40 countries - Skype has unlimited plans to call NZ landlines for US$2 per month, but of course we'd probably be able to let you choose which country you wanted your incoming number in so that friends, family, colleagues and clients can call you on your International number and reach you on whichever device you use to connect to the service.
Hayai-Hayai:
This is quite easy for us and customers to set up. From a SIP-capable device (IP-phone, one of our CPEs or even some mobiles), you log in to our service using any SIP client and using whatever username and password we assign you (eg 987654321@sip.hayai.in), and then you could call another Hayai customer (876543210) and if he has a phone connected then that should work and be legal, as it works in basically the same way as big companies which have extensions for each employee.
Outgoing - International:
This is as easy as Hayai-Hayai calls - we have SIP boxes in our data centre and we point them at a SIP trunking service and we offer you whatever rates are available. Many such countries are offering calls to 40 countries for about Re1/US$0.02 per minute, with the rest at varying rates according to whatever it costs to call there. We can work out packages that offer something like 120 minutes a month to these destinations for Rs100 and so forth.
Outgoing - India:
This would be a matter of finding a service which offers sufficiently cheap rates that we could be competitive on NLD - should be about US$0.01/50 paise maximum.
Special Numbers:
Like Airtel, Reliance etc you should be able to call things like customer service from a connection of ours (or if you're using SIP on your mobile, that SIP connection) to a special number which we assign - Airtel has 121, MTNL has 1500-1504... we might use something else like 777 or 111 or 123 or something for everything from customer service to topping up your data or checking your balance.
Customer Service Numbers:
In addition to special numbers as above, I am expecting that we will have a standard toll-free (0800) number available as well, though the provider of that number has warned me that it seems there are certain providers and regions where this number will not work for reasons I do not know.
TRAI:
On Monday I am going to try and call Mr S.K. Gupta (and send him an email to his personal gmail address) at the TRAI to figure out how much of this we are allowed to do and if there might be some possibility that we will be able to provide a fully fledged phone service for both local, NLD and ILD using VOIP either now or in the future.
Unlike existing players, we don't have an existing PSTN business which would be "hurt" by using VOIP.
Basically, we are allowed to:
Allow direct dialling to International Destinations
Allow VOIP-VOIP communications between customers
And we are not allowed to:
Have phone numbers that adhere to the International Numbering Specifications under the Indian country code - though providing customers with a US/UK/NZ/whatever number is fine.
Allow caller ID to display an Indian phone number when someone does call India from one of our lines.
As such, I've been trying to figure out how can we allow incoming calls from landlines and mobiles at standard rates.
Incoming - India:
One thought has been to rent a standard phone line with sufficient capacity to handle all the simultaneous incoming calls (like your average corporate) and then assign each customer an "extension".
From what I can ascertain this is allowed, but may be sitting in a grey area legally speaking since I think this may be allowed for corporates for internal communication and whatnot - as such, you might end up dialling (from abroad) +91 22 3456-7890 ... 987654321 (where 987654321 is the non-geographic customer number we assign), or from India, dial 022 3456-7890 ... 987654321.
Incoming - International:
We can easily assign you a phone number in another country for whatever it costs per month from whichever provider we choose. As a baseline, a New Zealand geographic landline number retails for about NZD$7 (Rs240) per month, and is usually one of those destinations included in the 40 countries - Skype has unlimited plans to call NZ landlines for US$2 per month, but of course we'd probably be able to let you choose which country you wanted your incoming number in so that friends, family, colleagues and clients can call you on your International number and reach you on whichever device you use to connect to the service.
Hayai-Hayai:
This is quite easy for us and customers to set up. From a SIP-capable device (IP-phone, one of our CPEs or even some mobiles), you log in to our service using any SIP client and using whatever username and password we assign you (eg 987654321@sip.hayai.in), and then you could call another Hayai customer (876543210) and if he has a phone connected then that should work and be legal, as it works in basically the same way as big companies which have extensions for each employee.
Outgoing - International:
This is as easy as Hayai-Hayai calls - we have SIP boxes in our data centre and we point them at a SIP trunking service and we offer you whatever rates are available. Many such countries are offering calls to 40 countries for about Re1/US$0.02 per minute, with the rest at varying rates according to whatever it costs to call there. We can work out packages that offer something like 120 minutes a month to these destinations for Rs100 and so forth.
Outgoing - India:
This would be a matter of finding a service which offers sufficiently cheap rates that we could be competitive on NLD - should be about US$0.01/50 paise maximum.
Special Numbers:
Like Airtel, Reliance etc you should be able to call things like customer service from a connection of ours (or if you're using SIP on your mobile, that SIP connection) to a special number which we assign - Airtel has 121, MTNL has 1500-1504... we might use something else like 777 or 111 or 123 or something for everything from customer service to topping up your data or checking your balance.
Customer Service Numbers:
In addition to special numbers as above, I am expecting that we will have a standard toll-free (0800) number available as well, though the provider of that number has warned me that it seems there are certain providers and regions where this number will not work for reasons I do not know.
TRAI:
On Monday I am going to try and call Mr S.K. Gupta (and send him an email to his personal gmail address) at the TRAI to figure out how much of this we are allowed to do and if there might be some possibility that we will be able to provide a fully fledged phone service for both local, NLD and ILD using VOIP either now or in the future.
Unlike existing players, we don't have an existing PSTN business which would be "hurt" by using VOIP.
