bye bye voip

jaggeh

i was reading new scientist today and theres an article about a californian company working on software for the telcos to block incoming and/or outgoing VOIP calls/software.

the article is on page 29 and is titled Blacklash against free internet calls.
(for some reason NS.com is blocked in work so ill transcribe it from the mag, so forgive any spelling mistakes)

Many of the phone companies that own the wires connecting people to the internet are gearing up to block free phone calls that use voice over internet protocol (VOIP) Technology.
The online edition of IEEE Spectrum, the house journal of the US institute of electrical and electronics engineers, says phone companies in france, germany, egypt and saudi arabia have announced that they will block VoIP calls on their networks.
New software from Narus of mountain view, California, will help them do it. Called IP platform, it can detect VoIP's characteristic data packets, allowing the phone company to block or de-prioritise them. This either stops the call entirely or makes it sound awful, and the companies hope this will drive people back to paid-for phones.

EOF

Now i know ireland isnt mentioned here but eircom being the shower of cnuts they are wont take long to catch on.

Keyzer

Can't see that being very legal?
I mean its not like they have an argument like voip data is damaging their networks or anything...

Anyway, Eircom wont care, they make a lot more money from line rentals than actual calls....

RicardoSmith

Keyzer wrote:

Can't see that being very legal?
I mean its not like they have an argument like voip data is damaging their networks or anything...

Anyway, Eircom wont care, they make a lot more money from line rentals than actual calls....

If you have cable (NTL etc) you don't need a phone line. TV/BB/VOIP all over the cable. Companies also don't need phones lines either. A lot of companies have already gone this route. So Eircom is losing revenue all the time, and its increasing all the time.

CiaranC

Just use a non-telco ISP then.

Cabaal

If any ISP in Europe tries this they'll be all out war, I can see it happening in China and I think its already happened in one of the south american countries but this ain't going to happen in Europe

Offerings like FreeTalk provided by Dixons Group in the UK are helping to legitimise VoIP, also I don't think ebay will be very impressed if Skype users can't make calls to people in these countries.
If ISP's implement such a process they'll loose customers and it has the potential to be a PR disaster.

As for Ireland although I highly doubt they'd do it, Eircom are not exactly greeting VoIP with open arms
After all they still have their upstream capped to 128k on Home users ADSL lines, VoIP *could* be one of the reasons for this....if you were paranoid about such things

The NS story is located @ http://www.newscientist.com/channel/info-tech/mg18825225.500

OfflerCrocGod

Cabaal wrote:

If any ISP in Europe tries this they'll be all out war, I can see it happening in China and I think its already happened in one of the south american countries but this ain't going to happen in Europe

Why so sure?

harney

All they have to do is block the protocol, or degrade the quality on it. Port blocking is nothing new to ISP's so potentially that could be another route - in the UK ports 80 and 25 are blocked on my setup so I can't run a mail or web server.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051025/145250_F.shtml

rogue-entity

VOIP is just a protocol, not a service per se, so it is not tied to any particular port. However if port 80 or 443 are open for incoming traffic then skype can be used, and if the ISP impliaments a system to block VOIP then tunnel it through an SSH connection that connects to a proxy on an external network. Since the packets are encrypted there is no way for an ISP to know what information is being transmitted, unless this new software can detect VOIP packets even through a tunnel, and that would be very bad.

harney

I understand that is is a protocol, what I meant by the port blocking is that they have no issue with denying a service and saying it is for the greater good :mad:

Could they not block the SIP protocol, or are you saying that it cant be picked up as a result of being encrypted?

Keyzer

Surely its illegal to just block protocols on a network for the sole justification of loss of revenue?

Too many companies have invested time, money and effort into voip for them to just roll over and let the telco's have their way....

Cabaal

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Why so sure?

No justification for blocking it other then trying to stop a competing service, that and I guess I have faith in Europe and the european parliment

RicardoSmith

You'd think that would simply force people to use other ISP's?

Cabaal

RicardoSmith wrote:

You'd think that would simply force people to use other ISP's?

Again in many countries this would go against competition lasws, not to mention a possiable PR backlash.
Imagine if Eircom told everyone they had to use Eircoms pay spamblocking feature if they wanted to block spam, its laughable...the same goes for VoIP imho

Blaster99

How come Vodafone can block VoIP then?

Cake Fiend

I'd also be amazed if this could be done legally on a wide scale. Even if it were to happen, a new protocol would emerge (or tunnelling would become standard practice) and we'd be back at the beginning.

jimmycrackcorm

How could, Eircom for example, block or degrade VOIP traffic on Netsource or Digiwebs DSL lines? Even if they did it on their own network, how long before a mass migration to the VOIP providing ISPs?

This idea would seem to be only applicable to those areas in the states where there is only a single DSL Telco provider.