At the recent ITU World Policy Forum on IP Telephony, Yoshio Utsumi, ITU secretary-general, raised three key questions. Why do we need a new network to carry telephone calls when we already have one – the public switched telephone network (PSTN) – which does the job very well indeed? What does IP Telephony mean for developing countries? Why the big fuss over a new technology, which provides what is essentially an old service? These questions concern the whole world. But let us for the moment forget the world and confine them to India.

Utsumi himself had the answers. He underlined that IP-based networks represent a significant new opportunity for ITU members and are already an important part of the emerging new market environment in terms of volume of traffic carried and level of investment committed. "From a technical perspective, IP-based networks hold the promise of providing multimedia telecommunication services and new applications, merging voice and data. From an economic perspective, the use of IP-based networks promises to reduce prices for consumers, and the costs of market entry for operators, especially for long-distance and international calls," he added.

Simply put, this is the gist of what IP telephony would mean to a developing country like India. However, unlike in countries like US or China where IP Telephony evolved liberally, or otherwise, over a period of time, a lot of groundwork would be needed in India, both by the government and the service providers, before a switch over to packet-based telephony. A migration would also mean a disruption of the existing telecommunication model. The silver lining, nonetheless, is that India has before it, numerous IP telephony models from different countries to take lessons from.

Why does India need IP Telephony?

Drop the word IP telephony and the first thing that comes to mind is cheaper voice calls. Very few of us realize that IP telephony is not just about substantial reduction in long distance international or domestic voice call costs, it is also about choice and availability of new services. Besides, IP telephony, with low entrance cost for operators, could also encourage new investments in the telephony business. This is something that the country desperately needs, to tide over its notoriously low telephone penetration levels.

"A developing country like ours definitely requires cost effective communication. The first application I could think of is mass communication booths for VoIP calls & Internet access. Closer home, Thailand has done just that," says Himanshu Goel of 3Com India Limited. "Aren’t we ready for this since most of us still think ten times before making a long distance call?" he asks.

Then it is also about the availability of services and their easy accessibility by a larger number of people. In a country with an installed base of just 5 million PCs, would it not be prudent to allow people to send or receive any type of message without owning a PC?

"With the availability of technology to provision voice and data networks in a single infrastructure, developed and developing countries have clearly seen the business advantages of using the technology which benefits its people. And what benefits people cannot be a wrong decision," asserts SV Ramana, country manager, technical sales, Cisco India