The Indian government has decided to not issue any more ISP licenses to ISPs in in India, so around 50 ISPs and around Rs.550 crore of investment have been left high and dry, waiting for the government to come up with a new policy, reports The Economic Times. The issue, it seems, is that of illegal routing of international telephone calls, revenue share, service tax and meeting rollout obligations that have not been met. The government wants VoIP services to be monitored, and for services like Yahoo, MSN, Sype, Net2phone Bandtel etc to be bought under the license.
Yet another case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater – shouldn’t ISPs be allowed to set up operations with the understanding that they would be government by any changes in policy. It’s not like pre-established ISPs will not be governed by the new policy, so surely giving of licenses and formulation of policy should be independent of each other…especially when you don’t know how many teacups it will take before that policy is finalized. As it is the broadband situation in India could do with some quality competition.
Subscriber content
?
Subscriber content comes from Gigaom Research, bridging the gap between breaking news and long-tail research. Visit any of our reports to learn more and subscribe.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Comments have been disabled for this post