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Technology Stocks : Satyam Infoway Ltd-(Nasdaq:SIFY) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (218)	11/24/1999 2:24:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 1471

You may wake up to Net-based telephony soon Manoj Gairola NEW DELHI 24 NOVEMBER (Economic Times) THE department of telecom services (DTS) will soon launch Internet-based telephone services in the country. The services will be provided from limited exchanges on a pilot project basis initially. P S Saran, secretary, DTS told ET that the telephone services, based on IP protocol and called IP telephony, will soon be introduced in the country. "The services will be launched within three months on an experimental basis," said Mr Saran. IP telephony is different from the 'Voice over Internet', which is commonly used by Web surfers. While IP telephony uses Internet technology to provide telephone services, 'Voice over Internet' uses the existing Internet services for the transmission of voice. Initially, the services will be launched in four exchanges. Based on the success of the project, the service will be offered from more number of exchanges. While DTS has not yet finalised the tariff for the IP protocol-based telephone services, sources said the tariff for IP telephone services would be much lower than ordinary telephone services. Interestingly, DoT was opposed to the introduction of IP telephony in the country. It had contended that the technology had not yet evolved to that level and that quality of voice through IP telephony was not good. "I feel that the quality of voice through IP telephony is still not comparable to the conventional telephony. However, it is an emerging technology and we cannot neglect it," said Mr Saran. A number of private operators have shown interest in providing IP telephony in the country. Government's telecom policy, however, does not permit them to provide the service. The private operators, on their part, did not subscribe to the argument of the policy makers in Sanchar Bhawan that IP telephony should not be allowed since it was not good. "The government should allow private operators to provide IP telephone services and let the market decide its utility," said a private telecom operator. The prime minister's task-force on infotech was of the opinion that IP telephony should be considered as a possible alternative to rural telephony. The task-force had undertaken a project in the Warnanagar area of Kohlapur district in Maharastra. The project envisaged linking about 100 villages with a computer network using National Informatics Centre?s network. The task-force had found that IP technology and VSAT services reduced the cost of setting up telephones in rural areas. According to estimates, the cost of installing a telephone connection using IP protocol, which is essentially used in Internet, is up to 75 per cent lower than the cost of installing a telephone in rural area based on conventional analogue technology. The cost of a conventional rural telephone is anywhere between Rs 1.5 and Rs 2 lakh, according to a member of the IT task-force.