For anybody looking to add a second or third phone line, or who routinely spends hours a month on long-distance calls, VoIP looks like the way to go. It’s here, it works (well enough) and it will save you real money. And I expect it will get better in a hurry.

If the Internet can be your bookshelf, your radio and your TV, why can’t it be your phone as well?

It’s been able to be that for years, actually. But until recently, sending and receiving phone calls online were pastimes best left to techies who could reel off their computers’ numeric Internet Protocol addresses from memory -- you couldn’t simply plug a regular phone into the Internet.

Now you can. Naturally, it comes at a price, but the fees charged by most «voice over Internet Protocol» («VoIP» for short) services fall far below those of land-line phone service.

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Thomas K. Thomas

New Delhi , July 18

PRIVATE telecom operators and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd have opposed the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s new formula for imposing the access deficit charge.

While the former has objected to the entire concept of imposing deficit charges, BSNL has expressed reservations on TRAI’s new formula to collect the charge as part of the annual revenue instead of the current method of loading it on the airtime tariff. The controversial issue will be taken up by the telecom regulator in an open house discussion with the industry on Tuesday.

Access deficit charge is a form of a cess imposed by the TRAI on telephone charges in order to subsidise setting up communication facility in economically unviable regions.

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