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Review sought of Net policy

E-mail services and prospective Internet service providers have banded together to discuss the shortcomings of the Internet policy. The various services, the National Payphone Forum, the Global Mobile Service Forum and the Telecom Industry and Services Association have sought that the government review the new Internet policy that allegedly violates two vital recommendations of the Jalan committee set up to study the problem.

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The Jalan panel, set up by the government to study the issues involved, had called for ISPs having their own gateways to the Net. But the policy, as it stands now, will call for these services to either operate through Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited or the Department of Electronics's proposed gateway.

The memorandum to the prime minister, the communications minister and the minister of state for communication said that without such gateways, the bottleneck could result in limited bandwidth, low transmission quality and slow response. Worse, they would have to pay more -- through licence fees -- for using the low quality government services than they would operating through their own state-of-the-art services.

The overall result for the end-user, the memorandum claimed, would be a costlier and low quality access to the Net.

E-mail services have another serious grouse. According to the new Internet policy, e-mail providers hoping to become ISPs would have to set up a separate network, despite they being able to provide such services on their e-mail network itself. They also demanded that the licence fees on e-mail providers be removed since e-mail was already free on the Internet.

-Compiled from the Indian media

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