In India, VoIP and related applications over a private managed IP network have long been legal in closed user groups, though somehow an impression was always there that anything related to voice-over-IP was illegal. In fact, what was prohibited was the interconnection between a private and public network as well as carrying voice over the public Internet, that is, Internet telephony. While Internet telephony became legal on 1 April this year, interconnection between a private voice network with PSTN still remains illegal.

Many vendors define VoIP as a term that would encompass IP telephony and Internet telephony. There are others who would subscribe to still another set of definitions. The result—a lot of confusion at the user’s end.

What has changed now?
It is clear that the legislation of Internet telephony would mean cheap international voice calls for consumers, once ISPs begin reaching out to them. What does it mean to business organizations? Are ISPs in a position to make any difference for corporates, especially the bigger organizations, given the fact that quality of service as well as reliability is still an area of concern over the public Internet? The answer is both yes and no. Yes, if you look from a managed service perspective, and no, if you are looking at public Internet to run business-class applications. There can be tens of business communication applications that can be run over a managed network. On the other hand, one cannot expect anything other than cheap voice calls with no QoS from the public Internet.

The Internet telephony regulations that came into affect on 1 April this year essentially allowed transport of voice over the public Internet but only in a restricted way. As per the regulations, ISPs can now offer voice communication in three ways over the public Internet, that is, through PC-to-phone (PC in India and phone abroad), PC-to-PC and through Internet access devices (IAD)/ H.323/SIP terminal to IAD/H.323/SIP terminal. Nothing has changed for corporates using their intranet to transport voice. They still must confine themselves to closed user groups as interconnection of such a network with a PSTN network is prohibited.

What IP Means for Corporates… Do much more than just reduce voice call costs Voice and data convergence on one network  No need of PBX, which are closed architecture products Scalable and flexible architecture Enhanced service customization Unified messaging Multimedia messaging Huge savings on moves, adds and changes Ease of management Low ongoing maintenance and management costs Easy prioritization of bandwidth usage IP supports new levels of personal mobility

Many ISPs claim that the new Internet telephony regulations are a fundamental break from the past as far as their ability to offer IP-based voice services are concerned. "Businesses are also consumers. In fact, the vast majority of money spent on long-distance calls is from businesses and they stand to get significant cost savings on their total communication costs," says Jasjit Sawhney, CEO, Net4India. Net4India is planning to offer an array of voice solutions for the corporates built around the new Internet telephony guidelines. "Business can also enjoy the benefits of cheap international calls offered by a Net telephony provider," says PK Prakash of Cisco Systems. He, however, adds that given the unpredictable voice quality over the Internet, larger businesses would opt for voice service from some of the new ILD players who have announced significantly lower rates for international calls, enabled by voice-over-managed IP.

There are others who subscribe to the view that the new regulations do not carry much import, given the quality of service and reliability issues on the public Internet. Corporate organizations, they say, would never subscribe to a service in which QoS is not guaranteed or reliability is shaky. "Within the scope of the new regulations, three broad services are possible. They are Click2Talk, PC to phone and a premium-class near-ILD quality service using proprietary technology. While the corporate user would not be interested in the first two, he can use the third, provided certain infrastructure norms like dedicated bandwidth are met. But this again would be over the private Internet," observes Raj Hajela, managing director, Estel Telecom.

An interesting point, as Vijay Yadav, country manager, CommWorks, points out, is that in all three forms (that is PC to phone, PC to PC and IAD to IAD), the end user is expected to use a device at his end to convert voice to packet, and hand it over as packet to the ISP, who then moves it over the Internet. "In other words, as far as the ISP goes, he is receiving packets from the subscriber, the way he would receive packets for normal Internet access services, and the real value-add and differentiation of service in receiving and sending these packets over public internet is negligible," he adds.

Any smart subscriber could do it himself (i.e. send voice as packets) by paying simple Internet access charges. (So, the bottom line is that an ISP’s business case does not lie in moving voice at cheaper rates at best effort quality, because there would always be someone willing to offer it at an even lower rate.)

Managed Network Is the Key
Yadav says that major benefits would come to enterprises from services over a managed IP network. Using managed IP networks, a service provider can offer two benefits to business organizations. It can offer toll quality voice or voice good enough to conduct business transactions at lower costs. However, the larger benefit to these business organizations can be enhanced services or micro services. "The concept of micro services means services designed by the service provider to meet the specific communications needs of an enterprise," Yadav adds. Some of the enhanced services which IP telephony can enable are unified messaging, unified communications, voice mail roaming, IP centrex services, find me follow me services, voice messaging and voice broadcast.

Stating that an enterprise cannot still terminate the PSTN voice to the CUG network, Swapan Johari of HCL Comnet, a leading network integrator, points out that an enterprise with multiple offices across the country cannot set up infrastructure such as IP telephony. ‘’However, it is also true that if the enterprise takes the centrex VoIP service from a service provider then the basic/NLD operator can terminate his PSTN cloud in the same EPABX and the customer should be able to use this service to emulate IP telephony," he adds.

Notwithstanding the restrictions imposed by the regulations, they have been successful in creating a new enthusiasm among service providers, vendors as well as business organizations about IP. It still needs to seen how all this translates into new applications and services for corporates.

Ravi Shekhar Pandey