Coping with stringent telecommunications regulations required patience and creativity In the decade since Cisco Systems established engineering operations in India, its presence there has grown to include two global development centers, four sales offices, five engineering partners, three IT applications partners, and one business outsourcing partner; in total, some 4,500 users. To make communication and collaboration more efficient between these operations and Cisco headquarters in San Jose, California, our IT department wanted to extend its global WAN network using voice-over-IP (VoIP) technology. Regulatory constraints in India, however, forbid the interconnection of VoIP and the public switched telephone network (PSTN) there. As with many government regulations dealing with telecommunications, these rules were established to protect the revenue of local and long-distance service providers in India (enhanced services such as broadband are rare in India, which means that carriers must rely almost exclusively on basic telecom services for revenue). Still, we realized that there were ways to take advantage of VoIP. We could replace our traditional private branch exchange systems with Cisco CallManager (which handles IP call processing) and deploy IP phones. This system would require a voice gateway to connect to the traditional PSTN, which meant it could be used only as an in-building phone system. (Some companies in India have deployed such solutions, anticipating the day when the government would ease regulations.) We could also deploy an IP telephony system in conjunction with our data network and use the corporate WAN to carry voice traffic between corporate sites. This would allow us to realize some of the benefits of a converged networkncluding reduced toll charges between our offices. But it required a cumbersome system to meet all our needs: one phone for interoffice communications and a second for external communications. We chose to combine these two concepts: deploying IP phones for communications within offices and between sites, but adding a second phone for external communications to remain compliant with government regulations. This proved to be a challenge since it required a dual infrastructure: two phones, two voice mailboxes, and even two CallManager deployments. Unfortunately, it did not solve the simple problem that widely separated employees face: time zones. The 13-1/2 hour time difference between Bangalore and San Jose means that employees are often at home when they must join conference calls. If Indian employees called from home, they faced high toll charges; otherwise, they would have to go into the office at odd hours to access the WAN. We petitioned the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to allow an exception to the rule against PSTN and VoIP interconnections so that employees in either San Jose or Bangalore could make phone calls to India from home. TRAI granted the exemption and in 2003 set up a service called In Exchange, which allowed voice calls to terminate at the local Cisco office in India and be carried over the WAN to San Jose. Cisco pays a one-time activation fee (about US$2.50) and a rate of about ten cents per minute to enable this service on home phone lines in India. This solution did not, however, eliminate the need for a dual infrastructure. Cisco IT still wanted to find a way to merge the physical aspects of the two infrastructures without merging the callsnd to do so in a manner acceptable to the Indian government regulators. Part II looks at how Cisco solved the issue of network consolidation and offers advice for dealing with regulators. Related Links:Cisco India Converges VoIP and PSTN Infrastructure to Increase Productivity and Reduce Costs |
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