Faced with intense lobbying from telecom operators over the past few years, against opening up Internet Telephony (VoIP) to unlicensed players, the Telecom Authority of India has come out with recommendations only for Internet Telephony from licensed players. In the recommendations, which the TRAI says are "limited to provisioning of Internet Telephony by access licensees", it had addressed issues such as Internet Telephony across access service providers (whether Internet based telephony can be independent of the network", security issues, numbering, and VoIP calls made while international roaming. Thus, there is still no clarity on interconnection between app based service providers to telecom operators, and it appears that that is still not allowed. We've awaiting a response from the TRAI, and will update if and when we hear from them. In the meantime, app based VoIP providers have already suffered. The consultation paper was issued on the 22nd June 2016, and the regulatory uncertainty that has persisted over the last 15 months has cost at least one Internet Telephony service provider dearly: Nanu shut its operations earlier this year: it's CEO Martin Nygate had told MediaNama then that its investors had pulled had declined to invest further in the company because of a lack of clarity on the recommendations: "Not only is it not out, but no one knows when it will come out or if it will ever come out". The TRAI must speed up its decision making, or not launch consultations without a reasonable time-frame in mind. Downloads: Consultation…
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