An inter-ministerial panel on Monday approved VoIP and VoLTE (IP based connections) interconnection in India, paving a way for VoIP & VoLTE users to make and receive calls to and from non-IP based networks and vice-versa, reports Times of India. "The move has been cleared by the inter-ministerial telecom commission and groundwork to get it going will start soon," an official source told TOI. This could mean that services that use VoIP & VoLTE for voice calls including WhatsApp, Viber, etc could allow its users to dial landline and mobile phone numbers directly through it mobile app. We have written to WhatsApp regarding its stance about VoIP interconnection in India and shall update the story with the comments once we get a response. In addition, Reliance’s Jio 4g service, which is expected to launch commercially by April, explicitly uses LTE connectivity to make Jio-to-Jio calls only, due to current regulations in the industry. With the newly apprved regulations, Reliance Jio users who depend on VoLTE standard will be able to call subscribers of non-VoLTE networks, and vice-versa. TRAI on VoIP Interconnection: Last Month, The TRAI had issued recommendations to the DoT stating that IP-based networks are increasingly gaining traction; therefore facilitating interconnection between IP-based networks is imminent. According to Clause 27.3 of Unified License, which deals with interconnection between the networks of two different licensees, ‘a circuit-switched network can interconnect with an IP-based network through a Media Gateway Switch’. However, after subjecting to the current approval the TRAI is expected to…
