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Illegal Web calls by BPOs face axe
2006-12-07
It is giving final touches to a proposal under which ITeS companies must furnish the names of authorised service providers from whom bandwidth and internet telephony minutes have been taken. The companies will also have to give an undertaking that they will not use the services of unlicensed foreign service providers such as Net2Phone, Vonage, Dialpad, Impetus, Novanet, Euros, Skype and Yahoo.
As per Department of Telecommunications’ (DOT) estimates, these unlicensed service companies provide 30 million minutes of internet telephony per month to corporates, call centres and BPOs in the country.
According to official sources, foreign players such as Skype, in addition to disturbing the level-playing field for bonafide licensees, were also causing great revenue loss to the government as they did not pay the 12% service tax and 6% revenue share on internet telephony. Sources said DoT was keen to implement this move on security grounds too. Foreign service providers could be a “serious security threat as they did not come under any Indian regulator and policy framework,” they added.
The CEO of a leading BPO company claimed, on conditions of anonymity, that the larger ITeS organisations were well aware of regulatory issues, and were abiding by the law, but pointed out that the issue may be more prevalent in case of smaller BPOs. “However, one also needs to keep in mind that technology is changing rapidly and it will be hard to monitor such things. The policy in the next few years also needs to look at cost-effective technologies that offer significant economic benefits to businesses,” the executive said.
The government move, when implemented, will fulfil a long-pending demand of internet service providers (ISPs). Internet Service Providers Association of India president Rajesh Chharia said: “It is essential that the government seeks this undertaking from call centres as these foreign service providers do not possess the requisite licences as mandated by the Government of India for Indian ISPs.”
Once this proposal is implemented, the government, in case of an emergency, would be able to trace details of all internet telephony minutes. This is because, when minutes are purchased from authorised players, the company is mandated to provide any data pertaining to the use of internet telephony like call detail record, if required by the security agencies.
ISPAI has also demanded that the DoT put a notice on its websites indicating the names of operational ISPs having internet telephony licenses so that call centres and BPOs can ensure that they are availing services from an authorised service provider.
By Joji Thomas Philip and Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee
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