It could be the killer application to promote broadband

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: Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) or internet telephony is a value added service to make a voice call to other countries, using internet/broadband as a medium. Imagine a student staying at a hostel. Normally, students are availing internet services in the privacy of their rooms, but how many times have we heard of a phone connection in their rooms?

There are innumerable students whose parents are in other parts of the country. It will be a big boon for them to use one medium (internet) to browse the world wide web for their study-related research, and talk as well. There are also a large number of families in India whose close relatives have gone abroad to make a livelihood. Internet telephony provides an inexpensive mode of communication through which they can practically talk to their loved ones abroad or even in country on very frequent intervals. There are two primary ways to do voice telephony:

Conventional, through a fixed line: You connect to any phone anywhere in the world through a unique phone number. Connectivity is via fixed lines or mobile

Internet telephony: The voice travels as data packets through the internet cloud. This is another option, as it does not entail the laying of physical cables.

Internet telephony in rural/remote areas can easily be bundled with a broadband connection. One PC with a broadband connection and internet telephony at least to a post office or a village panchayat can be provided. If a person sitting in Delhi or Mumbai can talk to a person in New York or Los Angeles for less than Re1 per minute, why can’t we offer such facility to our own rural people with in India?

Internet telephony could be the killer application to promote broadband in the country. It will reduce the cost of telecom drastically, which we can find out from the Trai report on international calling. In 2005-2006, the total outgoing calls from India was 2,500 million minutes. In this, the share of VoIP through ISPs was 250 million, while in 2006-2007, the minutes increased to 3,500 million and, the share of VoIP through ISPs increased to 800 million minutes.