A few years ago, I hosted Richard Stallman in Hyderabad where he spoke without even a slip of paper for one and a half hours on four freedoms of software. Over a period of time, I have realised that telephony needs to articulate a similar manifesto of freedom. Here is a rough cut:
- Freedom 0: Anybody should be able to talk to anyone without paying on a per minute basis. This implies the end of government surcharge on every call minute, spectrum charges and the telco toll.
- Freedom 1: Free access to the entire technology stack. People should be able to create their entire telephones, gateways, switches and networks without any restrictions on size and reach. This requires IPR free source code for the entire telephony stack.
- Freedom 2: Free access to the global telephony network
I will explain each of them in detail in my later posts.
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