India to Block VOIP Calls

The time is up for the Indian VOIP Market. India will soon start blocking all VOIP calls (incoming or outgoing). If you are calling India, Don't miss this news.

One of the most shocking news for Indian VOIP market is out! The verdict is India is going to block all VOIP services. The Intelligence Bureau is asking the government to block VOIP calls in and out of the country as a measure of national security.

The ban is not yet in place but it could come at any moment.

Who is going to lose when India Bans VOIP?

If ever India is going to ban VOIP, Calling rates to India will skyrocket. Our best guess is around 7-10 cents per minute or even higher, since most VOIP operators will have to end up negotiating with tier 1 telephony providers such as Bharati, Reliance or BSNL etc. It will become a monopolistic market where a few telecom providers will own your long distance calls. This would also been that cheap international calling services like Nymgo, Tringme, Localphone will have to reinvent the wheel to lower the prices further but with only a few telecom providers in play this would not be a cakewalk.

How effectively India can ban VOIP?

Well look at how UAE managed to ban VOIP. India can do the same but there are and will always be loopholes such as VPN, using IAX instead of SIP (if they ask ISPs to block 5060 ports) etc.

We believe this move is totally stupid for following reasons.

1) VOIP is not the only way of communication for anti-Indian groups. They can very well use Satellite Phones or scrambled phone lines. Government needs to upgrade their "1970" mindframe.

2) VOIP ban means more illegal VOIP usage which in turn means loss of revenue for the govt.

3) It might force us to believe that certain parties are going to benefit from this move. The telecom operators in India certainly do not like to share their revenues with cheap VOIP providers. I will be buying Bharati, Reliance communications shares now because they will skyrocket after they ban VOIP.

What do you think about this move by the government? Does this make any sense to you?

Let us know your comments and lets hope this never gets implemented for real.