alt Hacker NewsIndia is kind of cute.
In the late 90s I attended a Telephone industry conference while working for a telephony test equipment company. A rep. from the Indian government gave a talk on their telephone system regulations. During the question period I got up and asked how India was dealing with voice over internet protocol (VOIP). With a straight face the speaker replied "We will not allow it". :-)
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That's funny considering the scale of WhatsApp now in the country.
Reminds me of Elon's answer to the question of what various countries can do about StarLink: "They can shake their fists at the sky."
That is still the case. I looked up this law. It is strictly forbidden to ever connect the POTS network to an IP network. End of story.
Lots of countries ban voip in some way or another. Not allowed to connect to the PSTN. Disrupted by licensed ISPs based on traffic inspection. Large vendors yelled at. Etc.
And it's also cute when people imply the internet is unregulateable. There are plenty of tools that countries use to regulate internet traffic. They can require ISPs to DPI the traffic and block it. They can MITM traffic. They can shut off the internet entirely. They can throw people in jail. etc.
This stuff happens in many places, including in India.