You may have to pay more to talk over net

Todays eco times covered the following story which may be some interest to our blog readers,

The government proposes to put its stamp of authority over one chunk of hitherto unregulated cyberspace: internet telephony offered by companies like Yahoo, MSN, Skype, Mediaring, Packet8, Dialpad, Amazon, Impetus, Euro, Net2Phone Bandtel and Euro.

Internet telephony, so far a saviour for millions of Indians with kin abroad, is set to become costlier, once the government finalises a proposal to bring internet companies like those mentioned above under the ambit of the country’s Internet Service Provider license.

For consumers, this simply means a rise in tariffs as a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) or a net telephony call on Skype or Yahoo will soon attract a service tax of 12.24%, in addition to a revenue share of 6%.

More details at economictimes.indiatimes.com

It covers about a typical orkut problem, a community which says, “I Hate India”. We had already run a campagin against this group, Google should be deleting this community from orkut. Echo times says,

This comes on the heels of similar attempts to regulate the services offered by global online giants in India. Google should know, or it will, once the Maharashtra government follows the Bombay High Court’s order to issue the company a notice on allegedly spreading hatred against India through a community called ‘I hate India’ on its social networking site Orkut.