Videsh Sanchar Nigam has raised the alarm on the sharp spurt in international calls being made through the internet using some select websites including the popular MSN Messenger. The international telephone major and the country s largest ISP has informed the government about the revenue loss and simultaneously plans to block access to the telephony facility on some websites, including MSN Messenger. It has already informed the government of the sharp spurt in calls over the internet which is banned in India and the revenue loss that could hit the government because of this, considering that there is a revenue sharing deal between VSNL and the Department of Telecommunications. A top VSNL official said over the past few months, it had been seen that a large number of people had started making international calls over the Internet. Even public places like cyber cafes were being used.
Internet telephony is banned in India.
There is therefore a legal issue. Most of these calls are offered free of cost to subscribers and they only pay the internet access charge. MSN Messenger has become a very popular platform for making these calls. VSNL sources said in the past, the ISP has been blocking sites that would offer internet telephony. But this was a few years ago, when not only were the number of such websites very few, but also the number of people who used the Internet to speak to people abroad were not too many.