DoT seeks details of WiFi calling services from Trai

KOLKATA|NEW DELHI: Consumers may have to wait a little longer for WiFi-based calling services as the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has sought clarifications from the regulator on routing of international voice calls over the public internet, the relevant numbering scheme and a local interception mechanism before notifying the internet telephony policy.

Top carriers Reliance Jio Infocomm, Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel though are readying to offer these calling services – which can be used even without a cellular signal by using public WiFi – through the `voice over WiFi’ route, once the policy is notified.

Such `voice over WiFi’ calling services will immediately work on 4G VoLTE devices.


“The government has inprinciple approved internet telephony but a separate set up has to be created for international origin voice calls, and on numbering scheme too, besides local interception, for which, clarifications have been sought from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai),” a senior DoT official told ET.

Naveen Kulkarni, telecom analyst at PhillipCapital, expects “Jio to have a headstart over Airtel and Idea in launching voice over WiFi internet calling services as its 4G network already supports VoLTE, while incumbents have only recently started launching VoLTE services”.

Such voice over WiFi calling will be possible on any 4G VoLTE smartphone, and may in future be available on the JioPhone, though this wasn’t confirmed by the company.

A senior handset industry executive said “any VoLTE phone would automatically support Voice over WiFi calling service, but a non-VoLTE device would require an app with a suitable dialer to make a call using WiFi data”.

Executives at market leader Airtel and Kumar Birla-led Idea Cellular said the telcos are also open to offering internet calling services, but only once there are adequate VoLTE devices in the market.

However, according to Counterpoint Research, the total number of VoLTE phones already stood at 96% of the country’s total smartphone base as of March 2018, and the percentage share is slated to grow to 98% by the year-end.

At of press time, Jio, Idea, Airtel and Vodafone India did not reply to ET’s queries.