Microsoft's Internet telephony service Skype is discontinuing the ability for Indian users to make Skype calls to landlines and mobiles within India from November 10, 2014. (Hat Tip - Gopal Srinivasan) While the company hasn't provided any reason as to why it is discontinuing this service, it notes that Skype users can continue to make free Skype-to-Skype calls within India, make calls to mobiles and landlines in India from outside the country and make International calls from India to mobiles and landlines in other countries. We've written to Skype for more details on this and will update once we get a response. It's worth noting that as per Indian laws, PC to PC, or IP to IP telephony is currently allowed but calls originating from within India cannot be terminated on mobiles or landlines. However, there has been a practice of calls originating on IP in India, being routed internationally, and then being terminated on landline or mobile networks within India. Geodesic, now being wound up, used to do this with its VoIP service Spokn. More on that here. Viber had also recently launched a similar VoIP service in December last year, however when the founder & CEO Talmon Marco was asked whether they have an unified license to offer this VoIP service, he had mentioned that they are “not an India-based company. So….” The fact that Skype is discontinuing this service now makes us wonder if telecom operators or TRAI's forthcoming Internet services regulations (or OTT regulations as the organization calls it) has something to do with it. A…
