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VOIP to be Made Illegal in India
Krish writes "Providers like Skype, Yahoo, Net2phone, Dialpad, etc. will not be able to offer VOIP in India under the proposed govt. clampdown. BPOs and other call centers will face the axe if they use any of the VOIP services provided by the above companies. It is not clear if this clampdown will affect regular home users."
of the uninformed to try to control what they have no clue about in order to protect outdated and now irrelevant business models... sigh
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The short answer: Tax money. VIOP providers were not paying it, so the government is making them illegal.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
Here's the British Government:
Government: You're illegally calling people.
You: No, that's e-mail.
Government:Turn over the cryptographic keys so that we know it's email, or spend the next 30 years in jail.
(that's right, in UK it's a crime to not turn over your cryptographic keys/passes.)
It used to be very expensive to build phone lines so they charged to make phone calls.
Since they charged a large amount of money, it was convenient to put a tax on that charge.
VoIP is basically free. If you want to pay someone for higher quality you can but there are so many ways to talk via voice over the internet now it's insane. I can't see how the indian government is going to do this against private individuals any more than they can stop porn, drugs, sex chat, etc.
I think they can make businesses use taxable voip, but data is data for private people.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Actually, when I read this, I couldn't help but laugh at all of the dumb companies that thought that they could save money by investing in [India]
There is no question that companies are saving (and making) money by investing billions in India. A few VOIP taxes are not going to change that.
[India] is still, essentially, a third world country.
Nobody said otherwise. India is a developing economy. You have a very strange understanding of economics if you think that you cannot make money in a developing economy. Look at the bushfulls of money that have been made in the last 50 years in (e.g.) Korea, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, China, etc.
They should've realized that a few McDonald's and a rudimentary grasp of English doesn't make a country a first world country, (a good place to do business).
Rapidly growing economies are precisely where you go to do business.
I hope the backwater Indian government continues to tax "outsiders" in their own provincial way so that these stupid companies will learn their lessons.
America's backwater government also taxes "outsiders" in a provicial way. Haven't you heard about Bush's protectionism: http://www.progress.org/2003/trade12.htm
I think that India has a LONG way to go before it should be considered as any kind of technological powerhouse, and I think that this is a strong sign that that is true.
India's software industry alone is worth $20 billion. Tata infotech took 23 years to make its first billion and 23 months to make its second. Is that a powerhouse comparable to the American industry? Probably not. Does it matter? India's tech industry is strong, healthy and growing, no matter how much you might wish otherwise. Save your schadenfreude for someone who deserves it. You might want to read this to learn what's really going on in India: http://www.economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly. cfm?story_id=5300960
The thing that really struck me the most in "new" India, all those malls and food courts and stuff, is how prevalent Chinese food is, among other things. Granted, Indian Chinese isn't quite Chinese as I know :-D, but I've travelled to Hong Kong and throughout most parts of South East Asia, and I don't think I've seen the reverse happening.
India's opening up faster than most ex-pat Indians realize.
We've got the world's largest twenty-something population. Half the country is my age, 24.
Which of the twenty-seven or so educational systems are you talking about? If it is the CBSE or the ICSE, then you'd be hardpressed to explain why they follow it in some schools here in Singapore, or in West Asia and southern Africa, in Tanzania, Kenya and, I understand, South Africa. The educational system per se isnt soul-ripping, but the competition is; never, however, doubt the intent of some of the better designed systems.
:-)
I take it that you haven't worked with these lobbyists? The problem with Indian politics is that it's a huge superset of local politics glued together somehow under the Indian tricolour; the difficulty is in having a larger picture, or in convincing folks to look beyond their backyards. I doubt anybody is malicious though, in their intent; there is a lot of good work being done, albeit slowly. I think we're about to hit the corner in a year or so when folks start demanding action at a national level as well.
Tough work, but there are reasons to be optimistic. All is not lost.
More than mere navel gazing.
"Gather a mob, shoot the bureaucrats between the eyes" "The world would be a better place if this happened more frequently."
Really? It already happens a bit too frequently, and the world is a worse place for it.
Typically it's the mob leaders who don't mind killing people who end up in power (because the "other options" end up dead - doh). And that's how people like Mao, Saddam Hussein, the leaders of Syria, Sudan, etc rise to the top - their opponents either get killed, jailed, or exiled. And that is why Karl Marx's Communism dreams tend to end up as nightmares - because he suggested violence as a means to communism.
If you keep doing that once in a while if you get lucky you get a benevolent dictator or a dictator who somehow thinks that democractic elections are a good idea.
But what are the odds? If you end up in such a scenario it may be better to just wait (leave or stay) and hope that the dictator picks successors who are less violent (which has a higher chance of happening, since the dictator will want to eliminate threats - e.g. others like him). Then when the time is right you make a move for mass civil disobedience - NOT violence and hope the soldiers will disobey as well.
Irrelevant. Read the damn Constitution. It only protects you from being forced to testify against YOURSELF. Skelton is in jail for refusing to give information about SOMEONE ELSE.
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That bit about customers not caring is so true. But as soon as you start spending money outside of your community (village/city/stage/country), it's gone.
People go and buy imported goods (and services now it seems) because they save a few dollars, and then bitch and moan because another factory has closed down and they're out of work. It's your own f*cking fault people!!! If you're lucky enough to live in a country that protects working conditions, then ffs don't go and buy stuff from a country that doesn't. You're only ripping yourselves off.
my experience working with engineers in India is that there's basically two ways companies can go about building a dev team in India. first, you can hire good engineers who cost aroudn 1/2 to 1/3 of what they'd cost in the US, and have at least roughly comparable skill levels. second, you can hire warm bodies who're engineers on paper, and you can get them for 1/5 to 1/10 of what similarly warm bodies would cost in the US. if whoever's in charge of hiring there understands that people are not fungible assets, you've got a good chance of getting a useful and productive team in India; if not, you're more or less screwed. my experience with customer support (other than as a customer) is more limited, but i have no reason to believe it's not the same there.
i work with a guy who says things like "an indian could never understand me", where "understand" means "relate to". he gives examples of things like understanding baseball. wtf do i care if the customer support rep on the phone knows who won the Yankees game last night, regardless of where they are? there's legitimate points about language barrier and cultural differences impacting effective communication, and then there's flimsy rationalizations for stinking racism.
i speak for myself and those who like what i say.