Is this on Sir ANto's Christmas Wish List to Bertie?

Mr_Man

China Telecom, the nation's biggest fixed-line telephony provider, is blocking computer-to-telephone call services including those from Skype, according to state press reports.

Customers have reported that they cannot use the SkypeOut service to call ordinary phones. The service allows users to make calls from their computers to fixed line or mobile telephones at significantly lower rates that traditional services.

The Financial Times reported that this will not affect PC to PC calls using Skype.

Shenzhen Telecom, a local arm of China Telecom, is experimenting with blocking computer-to-telephone and computer-to-computer services in the major urban centres of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, according to Chinese newspaper Beijing Business Today

No doubt if he asked Comreg nicely they'd agree to let Eircom do this as it would 'protect' the huge investment they have made in their network over the past few years.

M.

zuma

Hey,
You can bet your life on it that such thoughts have gone through "Sir Anto"'s mind over the last year!!!

jwt

Vodafone in germany, Vonage in the states, Madison River Communication in the states all have blocked VoIP.

But Yahoo, Google and MS offerings look to be port independant, or at least capable of changing ports so good luck to anyone attempting to block VoIP in the future.


John

zuma

This reminds me of something I read in another forum:

Taiwan: VoIP Banned Via Wimax
In order to protect 3G carriers!
http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/66947

Eweek reports (via Techdirt) that the Taiwan government has decided to ban Wimax based ISPs from selling VoIP service, in an effort to protect 3G wireless broadband carriers in the country. It's not clear how the government aims to prevent users from using applications such as Skype via Wimax connections.

zuma

Mabye this thread should be moved to the VoIP forum???

jwt

Given that VoIP is possibly the "killer app" for broadband, and particularly that it is influenced by upload speeds and is damm near unusable on dial up, I think its relevant to IOFFL.

After all, we campaigned hard for increased download speeds v cost, why not IPS/telcos blocking VoIP (or at least making it difficult)

John

Tom Young

"killer app" is a terrible expression. VoIP is packetized transport mechanism. Do you mean VoIP is a demand comodity unlike regularised Voice or POTS that may drive the need for broadband?

Unlike Voice/POTS TDM, IP/packets can be used to carry far more than just voice and communications can be combined in order to establish multiple User media over packets.

Heard of Naked DSL?

I am not taking a shot more campaigning against use of that expression "Killer app". It give me indigestion. Similar to the 80/20 rule used in the wrong context.

jwt

Hence the quotes, I'm not keen on it either as an expression


John