The Hindu : National : See the speaker as you talk over phone

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Sunday, Jan 07, 2007
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See the speaker as you talk over phone

Anand Parthasarathy

Mumbai operator YOU to offer the service by the end of this month

DREAM MACHINE: The Video Internet phone that will soon be launched in India

Bangalore: You can make calls from a handset, without having to go to the Web Video telephones. And this allows you to see the called person as you speak. This is becoming a reality in India.

Mumbai-based broadband provider YOU Telecom will offer, for the first time in the country, video telephony services based on the affordable Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology — that is, instead of going through the landline or mobile channels you can route your calls over the Internet.

YOU is already offering VoIP services for customers registered on its network across Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore, Pune, Surat, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Gurgaon, Visakhapatnam and Navi Mumbai. Government regulations restrict the company to offering the service within a closed network or intranet of its subscribers.

Customers can use the VoIP handsets such as normal telephones and avail themselves of the cheaper Internet rate without having to access the Web through a PC. Come February, they can upgrade their phones to the new videophones that YOU have sourced from Taiwan and are offering for Rs. 17,000.

The price of a video handset is still not low enough to create a mass market, agreed YOU CEO E.V.S. Chakravarthy, while talking to The Hindu on Friday. He felt that within a year the price should drop internationally to around Rs. 5,000 — when the see-and-speak proposition will become attractive to lay users. ``At YOU, we think Voice over IP is the communication protocol of the future, which will make affordability a reality in telecom business,'' Mr. Chakravarthy said. ``With a robust broadband explosion, the customer will be the ultimate beneficiary of this technology option — subject to regulation permitting the power of IP to grow rapidly in India.'' Worldwide, the ability of the Internet to efficiently carry telephone voice and video traffic is being exploited by governments and industry to bring down the cost for millions of users who could hitherto not afford to make long distance and international calls.

However, the Indian Government has not allowed the public STD booths to harness the cheaper VoIP option for person-to-person calls. This does prevent individuals with access to the Internet from using the technology to talk to others who are similarly connected.

In fact, global players such as Skype have created ready-to-use `virtual' software phones, which can be downloaded to make the experience almost as easy as pushing buttons on a physical phone.

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