The rapid growth of Korean messaging service LINE suggests why Indian regulators recently reduced government-imposed charges on voice services.
LINE is adding 1.7 million new users every day, on a base of 560 million registered users worldwide.
LINE is now being used in 230 countries and more than 13 billion messages are sent every day, according to Jeanie Han, LINE head, Europe and Americas.
Indian regulator TRAI has eliminated fixed line termination rates and cut mobile termination charges by around 30 percent. Notably, the reason for the fixed line termination charges for landline calls is that the fixed line voice business is in decline.
TRAI hopes the end of the 0.20 rupee ($0.003) termination rate for both landline-to-landline and landline-to-mobile calls will stimulate usage and subscriptions, and also lead to more investment in fixed networks.
TRAI also expects to reduce mobile network interconnection charges from 0.20 rupees to 0.14 rupees. That move is intended to stimulate mobile calling.
Those changes in the Indian market are not unusual. U.S. fixed network voice lines have been dropping since 2000. Globally, fixed voice lines have been dropping since about 2006.
At present India has only around 27 million wireline connections, and the total number of subscribers has been in decline since incoming mobile calls were made free. This compares to a total of 943.9 million mobile subscriptions.
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