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HCL first to offer Net telephony in India

Bipin Chandran

HCL Infinet, a Delhi-based Internet service provider subsidiary of Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Infosystems, is planning to start Internet telephony in the domestic market with Internet protocol telephones.

While HCL Infosystems will manufacture IP telephones, HCL Infinet will club it with ISP services to offer Internet telephony. This is expected to bring down tariffs for domestic long-distance calls.

As per regulations, a customer will require IP-based H323/SIP phones to make Internet telephone calls in the domestic market, which are much cheaper. The regulations also permit PC-to-PC Internet telephony within India.

"To avail of Internet telephony in the domestic market, you will require such phones. We will offer Internet telephony for the domestic market around this product. We are finalising the plan and a team is looking into the strategy," HCL Infinet president Saurav Adhikary said today.

This will make HCL Infinet the first company in the country to offer Internet telephony for the domestic market.

The company will first concentrate on corporates. Subsequently, it will target the consumer segment.

"Customers will not require a PC to make calls and these phones will work like normal phones. Since IP phones are easier to use, Internet telephony with IP phones is expected to be more popular than the normal PC-based Internet telephony," an analyst with the International Data Corporation said.

The other company that makes IP phones is Cisco Systems. Its products are priced at Rs 15, 000 and above.

"We will consider affordable prices for the Indian market," Adhikary said.

Cisco markets its IP phones just to corporates. HCL Infinet will use its ISP infrastructure to offer IP phone-based Internet telephony. The company is also looking at licensing the technology for manufacturing IP phones.

"We will most probably license the technology from an international company," he said.

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