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VoIP Beats Conventional Phone Service In Iraq
andyring writes "According to this article at Wired, without reliable long distance or particularly international telephone service in Iraq, citizens in Baghdad and elsewhere turn to voice chat over programs such as Yahoo Voice Chat or other similar programs. Broadband at Internet cafes in Baghdad runs about $1/hr, whereas an international phone call (if you can even get a connection) is about $1/minute. The service is so popular, it sucks up almost all the available bandwidth from the government-run ISP, State Company for Internet Services (site is Arabic)."
Ewww...
The service is so popular, it sucks up almost all the available bandwidth from the government-run ISP (LINK)
It isn't true anymore... from now it is Slashdoters who suck up almost all the available bandwidth...
In India, Broadband is 40 cents an hour, much less than $1 that the Iraqi ISP charges. Indian ISPs still make profits.
The dollar is inflated so much, it renders any comparison useless. Going by the article, Iraq could make more money selling bandwidth to the US than oil. But that would never happen, would it?
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
.. hope they've learned of the awesome power of Miranda.
Didn't try it, but there's an example of a voice plugin.
Fight for your digital freedom, join the EFF *now*: http://www.eff.org/support/
Not because I'm in a war-torn area with a flaky tele-com strukture, but simply because I live in Norway and has my girlfriend (fiancee really) in the US. While the quality of the connection cannot rival - or even get close - to that of a conventilan landline, it is offset by the fact that I don't have to pay thru the nose to spend an hour or so hearing her voice.
Voice over IP - it's a blessing in my life!
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Iraq actually still HAS an IP infrastructure? They have no electicity or running water but they can still surf porn sites, huh?
I used to live in a dorm with MBA's from all over the world and it was pretty obvious that the 100mbit switched network was loved most by those from countries with bad phone systems. Many of them bought a webcam, a microphone and were chatting away with friends and family back home or anywhere else in the world. It was cheaper and it gave alot less hassle with delays and operators and the like. Mind you, one does need a computer and dial up tot the internet, so this is only for the semi-richer people and those that can go tot internet-cafe's
:-)
On a related note, once at a RIPE-meeting a gentleman from Africa got a clunky looking phone (bit eighties style) from his briefcase, picked up the UTP that lay there for use with laptops and hooked the phone up to it. Within seconds he was chatting away with someone in Africa... YOu should have seen the stunned face on some of the geeks there.
Use Adsense for Charity
Using something like Yahoo Messenger to talk to people instead of using long distance isn't a new phenomenon. I have personally been using Yahoo Messenger and (before) Net2Phone on MSN Messenger to talk to people in England and India. International call rates aren't prohibitively expensive for me but it still makes sense to save a lot of money by using a free service. Voice quality isn't bad at all- most of the times it seems quite natural in a telephone sort of way. It works almost perfeclty if one or both parties have a broadband connection. Also, I have been talking to and have stayed connected to people who I otherwise wouldn't have been in touch with.
A lot of the people I talk to wouldn't be able to afford international telephony or find it very expensive at best. These people have been using tools such as Yahoo Messenger to stay connected for quite some while now.
Posting messages for the betterment of humanity..
IT is the same in all third world countries, but if the surfing got big really before VOIP it usually wont work because there is no bandwidth left for the internet cafés to use. Instead special phone companies that carry longdistance call over ip has sprung up, but that is expensive about a third of a per minute.
working halfway across the globe, I regularly use yahoo messenger to hold meetings with the US office. we've once even hooked up a machine with a webcam and had an entire department meeting that way.
of course someone had to sit in front of the pc so they could voice out what i said, and sound quality was a bit lacking, but it was a fantastic way to have teleconferencing on the cheap.
plus enabling the messenger's sounds allowed me to generate an annoying "ding" whenever someone said something silly heheh
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
While I have no idea how much of Iraq's infrastructure we took out in the recent war (and, apparently, neither does the CIA, read from below link), I bet it was probably a pretty healthy amount. And seeing as they didn't have that much to begin with, this might actually be a very great thing for Iraq and her people. Since the country's comm. systems were already pretty lacking, and since a presumably fair amount of said systems we're damaged/destroyed, this provides Iraq with a golden opportunity to have a rebuilt, ultra modern communications system. If we do it right, Iraq could very well have one of the most technologically advanced comm. systems ever designed. And the people of Iraq, at least based on this story, seem more than willing to embrace the technology and as such would probably be willing to try out the newest communications technology. This would be the perfect time and place to test new/unproven technologies and if they work well, we could adopt them here in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. Make the best of a bad situation.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
I work for a large telecommunications company and we have all our internal communications set up using VOIP.
I can dial my colleagues in all our offices throughout the globe from my desk phone to their desk phone using a series of short-codes. Of course this is only for fixed line at the moment but it must save us a great deal each day on video and regular conference lines.
The quality and response is noticeable if you know what you're looking for, but to the regular listener it just sounds like you have a clear line.
The IP network is soo much newer than the phone network, is this news?
[yes, this is a repost from another story. but it's a really really good program]
If you are looking for a nice Open Source VoIP client that works on Windows, Linux, and OS/X, try Speakfreely. For linux/osx track down the Tcl/Tk GUI.
encryption, multiple codecs, NAT, the works.
http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/
The original author and once-again maintainer is John Walker, founder of Autodesk, Inc. and co-author of AutoCAD. (!!!)
note: the debian package is criminally out of date and www.speakfreely.org is depreciated, out of date, and morphed into a commercial site.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
So when will they be able to afford this technology? How many Iraqi citizens even have computers? I know I'm coming from a position of ignorance, but it seems to me that the Iraqi people have bigger problems at the moment than lacking a quality communications infrastructure.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
I vaguely remember that after the Afghanistan war had ended and people could buy things again, Satellite phones were a hugely hot item, for those who could afford it, since there wasn't much of a land-line network cross country, or cell network outside of major cities. Why hasn't this happened in Iraq yet? I would think it more likely there because they do have more $ in that country than in Afghanistan.
SecondPageMedia - Wha
Maybe they want to warn us from listening to those channels
Interesting to see how GSM data connections affect voice call pricing. With a laptop connected to GPRS enabled mobile phone it is already possible to use VoIP programs to get voice calls essentially free if a fixed monthly fee data connection is available.
Even with a data limit of 1M Bytes, two hours of voice are possible with 64kbit/s data rate. More hours are possible with compression, I believe GSM phones use about 8kbits/s and voice quality is still acceptable.
With a mobile phone that can run TCP/IP and some VoIP program like GNU oSIP voice calls can be free, so charging current prices works only if mobile operators can ban VoIP.
I think it is more shameful to talk about telecom in Iraq w/o mentinoning, that most (at least western mobile for sure) providers are operating unlawfully. With the apparent consent of the US and GB. If this IS the exampe to be set for law and order, I'd rather not take it either. This is not liberation, this is colonisaton by any standards.
"Although nobody yet has a licence from anything you might care to class as a current Iraqi government, there are four networks in the country, and more will be bidding, starting with a meeting in Amman, Jordan on the 31st. Given that the licensing round hasn't started yet, one can only conclude that the presence of networks in places you didn't expect them represents a commendably go-getting approach to business.
It's not obvious what MTC-Vodafone is doing in Baghdad, but the Kuwait-based operator is in Basra at the behest of Iraq's Joint Communications Authority Board and the UK's Ministry of Defence. Does that count as a licence? Well, not if no licences have been granted yet, surely. But the network is effectively performing a similar function to that being carried out by MCI in Baghdad. Or by Batelco."
source: http://theregister.co.uk/content/59/31921.html
State Company for Internet Services = uruklink.net?? Arabic? sounds like the Black Speech, those orcs are wired!
Do you need a website upgrade?
The best move I ever made was getting rid of verizon and switching to Vonage. I have yet to regret it. VoiP Is SO the way to go...even to the door step!
I'm an authority on this subject, because a friend of mine once dated a girl. Actually, we never met her, but he showed us emails and pictures, so it must have been real.
My dictionary defines "fiancee" as "a mother-in-law waiting to happen", which sounds pretty drastic.
I think I'll stick with my geektoys for now.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
While I agree it takes a radical change to bring in new technology the fact is Iraq HAD one of the most advanced communication networks before it was blown up. I understand it's necessary to black out communications when you're at war but saying Iraq's previous systems were lacking is a major understatement.
-Matt
--- Need web hosting?
What a nice world view. I wish it were true.
There is no desire to create a good system. There is only the desire to satisfy greed. If a working system were the only thing in question, then Betelco would not have been told to turn off its newly installed cell-phone network. --Betelco, a middle eastern cell-phone company, with hard-working gumption and a capitalist's initiative any American would be proud to be part of were it to take place in the U.S. of A., just invested about $5 million to install a new cell-phone network in Bagdhad. Two days ago, they flipped the switch, and residents of Bagdhad were back on-line with working cell-phones, restoring public access to basic electronic communications (which did indeed exist before the US savaged Bagdhad's entire infrastructure.)
But naturally, the corporate favored ones who were first in line to carve up the ripe and newly 'cleared' market, cried and whined. "No fair! No fair!" And so the American military 'urged' yesterday that Betelco discontinue their services.
People starving and dying in the streets? Screw that. There's due process to consider here!
In any case, we certainluy can't have some scruffy upstart (non-American) telco walk in and take the cake after all the hard work the U.S. and "coalition forces", (read: "imperial lackeys"), did to trash the existing infrastructure so that "healthy competition" could be implemented. Heavens no!
Mind you, there is going to be a conference and a tender bidding to see which telco giant will get the juicy contract, and apparently, the Americans only are only represented by one of the three firms bidding. Looks like a PR bullshit parade to me. Smart money is on the U.S. dominating the field. They have the most guns there, after all, and the most dead Iowan farm boys! To the victor the spoils. (Oh, but this was a war of "liberation". How DO I keep forgetting?)
Same is planned for energy, water and, well, all the various corporate money makers a modern western city comes equipped with. Fast food. Televisions, cars and gumball machines all made in the grand old U.S. of A. --(And all to be subsidized by Iraqi oil and the US taxpayers, naturally.)
Oh yes, the corporations love this deal. Too bad a modern city had to be leveled, and women, old folks, babies and children had to be sliced into juicy red ribbons with American flachette bombs and chaotic bullet storms fired by terrified American boys who had no clue what the hell they were doing in the middle of Bush-The-Liar's evil war. Why is it that the innocent always end up killing/being killed in these sickening ploys?
And this is just the gravy. --Sure, it's really all about world domination, but one simply cannot perform the magic without also lining one's pockets along the way. It's the American Way, after all.
And sadly, it really, really is.
-FL
...the phone service beats YOU!!!
sure it is:
Enron Opens Bandwidth Commodity Trading Service
Enron rings opening bell for bandwidth exchange
Making bandwidth a commodity: Reality or just a good idea?
seriously though, the fact that everyone's favourite company started trading it as a commodity doesn't mean it isn't so...
This is not surprising. Getting a conventional POTS line in many countries is difficult: If there isn't an existing line where you want the phone, you'll be expected to pay the cost of putting one in; the infrastructure may be old, decrepit and, hence, unreliable; you may face a choice between waiting forever to get your phone or paying expensive bribes.
Conditions like that drive cellphone sales; VOIP is just one more alterantive.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
you said it. I'm sure someone will come along and disagree with you, but it's hard to argue with the truth.
Thanks for speaking out.
Hey remeber when you drink cokacola you are drinking the blood of dead union organizers.
Coke and many other USA based corporations set up shop in Colombia becuase the government allows them to hire paramilitaries to kill union organizers.
So remember when your gassing your car with the blood of dead Iraqi's that the coke you are jugging down is the blood of dead union workers.
Two very, very different things.
.. blowing up poles, wires, POPs and everything in between!
Liberation, nation-building and infrastructure upgrade in one convinient package.
making crank phone calls to the whitehouse.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Holy crap! I know people hate when the BLINK tag is used on one or two words on a page, but that ISP is using it on ALL of the text. Yes, all of the text on the page is blinking.
Sorry, but I just can't get over how stupid that is.
FBI wants the ability to tap phone calls placed over broadband connections
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I buddy of mine is down in the "big sand box" and has a MCI cellphone, funny thing is his phone number is local to NYC. When I talked to him, it would drop evey 5 -10 minutes.
hmm... for fun I enjoy launching DDoS attacks against 127.87.42.5
Here we have a clear demonstration of What People Want. So how are we handling this in the free USA? Telcos are lobbying their legislative hirelings state by state, getting laws passed that will allow them to forbid customers using VoIP, or any other function that threatens profit.
That link was not at all called for. It's one thing to Slashdot IBM, it's another to steal bandwidth from Third World countries.
--Or that Bush's prime directive was to 'Save those People'? I wonder what your naive excuse will be when your country takes out Syria, Iran, chunks of Africa, Korea, and then insanely hurls itself at China, (the mouse waking up the elephant.)
In any case, I suppose the fact that the Iraqis are sending a couple of U.S. boys home in bags every day is a sign that they truly appreciate their 'liberation'.
It'll be interesting to see how much you appreciate being 'liberated' when the world finally gets fed up with America and WWIII starts in earnest.
-FL
forwarded to Robert Fisk, the journalist/commentator for The Independent, his editor said he doesn't have email?
I'm like, what fraggin' reporter these days doesn't have email? Maybe she meant since he was in Baghdad, he didn't have ready access to email.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
yeah, that and jury costs for relasing white police officers after beating black people up.
:p
Yup that is all that we do over here.
it isnt socialism that makes your coke cost 25 kronor, if it was socialism it would be "people-coke" and cost exactly what it takes to produce+ship it.
No, we have elements of Socialism here in the United States (public education, parks etc). Cuba, China, N. Korea et al are not Socialists, they are Communists. I hate using the Socialist euphemism to describe the evils of those governments.
sweden and norway isnt socialistic in the marxhistic coining. we're no more socialists here than anywhere else in europe.
Well, that is simply untrue. Sweden has the most social programs of any country in the (industrialized) world. Europe is socialistic.
its just you americans that aint openminded enough to realise that there can be two kinds of meaning to a single word.
Faen, yes we are, but I will admit we aren't as open minded as you are. You are openminded enough to think that All Americans aren't openminded
i recommend you start training with "arab": in sweden, we have atleast two kinds of arabs "terrorist arabs", and "friendly arabs".
hint: the ones with guns are the "terrorist arabs".
Friendly arabs are what we call non muslims. (Just so you know, I am part arab myself)
How incredibly lame.
But definitions aside, let me add a few points in no particular order. .
1. Betelco, if it runs a clean operation, knows that it doesn't have a chance in hell to win such a contract. The British have only a 20% share in the company, and the rest is owned by Semitic interests, who we all know are terrorists and not white. No. That just won't do.
2. It's all about cell phones, which are nasty items anyway. So it hardly matters who puts them in; they're designed to deaden the minds of the populace. Not good.
3. I was not playing favorites; I was pointing out that the prime interest of the U.S. is money, not the welfare of the Iraqi people. --Betelco's Iraqi chief was hoping to hand out free cell phones to emergency crews, police, medical workers and other essential services in order to help get Bagdhad back under control. The simple fact that the US wants this plan shut down in order that 'proper bidding process' might be gone through, is evidence of exactly where U.S. priorities lie.
-FL
Ok deuche, you had me not annoyed until this one. Figure it out junior. By and large, Iraq's civilian population is quite happy we are there. I think whenever we all saw the Saddam statue fall, and people running through the streets hitting the head with their shoes, it became pretty apparent they like us. Women blow kisses and throw flowers to passing military convoys, children play with our soilders, and most grown men actively go to our men and say thank you. Because a few left overs from Saddam's regime keep fucking around and taking lucky pot shots here and there does not mean the country does not love us. Same thing happened in Germany at the end of WW 2. Our soilders occasionally got sniped, but by and large, everyone loved us. Of course, this time things are a bit worse, mostly due to the fact Saddam figured he'd lose this war and, thanks heavily in part to the fact pussy nations like France and Russia that also, ironically, had huge contracts with Iraq, he had a huge amount of time to prepare for oncoming war, and later resistance, while we dicked around with the UN trying to do things the "right" way. Of course all this did was blow ANY element of suprise we may have had.
Now, as for WW 3 and the U.S. being liberated. You are a complete moron. I have no idea which shit hole country you are from that has either been saved directly or indirectly by the U.S. or completly owned by us in a war, but you really need to get your shit together. I mean, Jesus, someone may read your dribble and think you have some kind of valid point. So let me spell it out here for everyone interested: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ALLOWS ALL OF YOUR COUNTRIES TO EXIST. Understand one very beautiful fact. We own this world. We are unstopable. On a U.S. v. World standpoint, you can see how meaningless any dumb ass rant about other countries attacking us really is. On an ability top project military might stand point, we have 13 full blown nuclear powered aircraft carriers, and their battle groups, with about 9 of them actively deployed at any given time. Britian has 4 VTOL carriers (Think Harriers, great except for the fact any heat guided missle will kill them), France has 1 limited carrier, and a handful of nations have about 10 other VTOL carriers. Oh my, whatever will we do. And for nukes, we're to damn big to kill with a nuke strike, and even if something did happen and the US land mass was vanquished, you'd still have a minimum of seven nuke subs at sea with the ability to extract devine nuclear retribution on anyone stupid enough to launch a nuke strike against us. And I'm not even going to get into why and land invasion would never, ever work.
And on a history stand point, things are even greater for the US. We've decimated entire nations, killed rouge leaders and their families, destroyed governments, and generally took out anyone who's dicked with us. Hell, we only ever "lost" in Vietnam, and I think we really have to look at who really lost that one. We went, we fought bravely, the country still fell, we left, we moved on. Meanwhile, they still haven't recovered from everything we did to them. Yeah, we really "lost" that one... Look at the other countires we've went up against: Japan, one time Imperial War Machine, now they made most of the components for my TiBook. Germany, former Nazi empire, now makers of fine (albeit overpriced) auto mobiles. England, Spain, and Italy, ass whipped, in order, in 1776, 1812, and 1944, and now they are all valliant defenders of freedom along side us. Russia, we never even fought them, but still managed to crush the USSR. Just to name a few. And you know what? We are unbeatable. No one can challenge us. The best they could do is drop some nukes, and we're to big to kill that way. We are the rulers of this world, and we could take it all if we wanted, but we don't. No, we stand for justice and freedom. Weither or not the rest of the world ever sees that, who cares. Let them be ingrates and jealous and hateful of the very way of life, the very freedom, that we strive to pr
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
ok, this is going very offtopic and i really dont wanna make myself more stupid than i already look ;)
anyway, you'll have to realize thats its all relative, to me, sweden is very _very_ far away from what i would call socialistic in the sense of former russia. socialism to me is about stopping people from exercising their right to live the life they want themselfs. to me socialism is evil. socialism takes your rights and generalises you with the rest of the population no matter how good or skilled you are.
if that is what you want to call sweden and europe, god help us.
the swedish system was working until some greedy people from (yeah you guessed it - the "socialist"-party) raised their own retirmentpayments soo much we had to lend money to cover the costs. but if humanity comes at the cost of a can of coke costing 4 dollars, you bet ill be there buying.
what is my point of humanity? its the right to be able to live a life where you dont have to rely on others for food, where you dont have to have two jobs to support your kids, where you can take two weeks of vacation without getting fired from your employeer.
and sincerely, is that what you have in america today?
... Iraq will get Running Water over IP, Food over IP, Medicine over IP and the killer application - Electricity over IP.
Stay tuned...
what is my point of humanity? its the right to be able to live a life where you dont have to rely on others for food, where you dont have to have two jobs to support your kids, where you can take two weeks of vacation without getting fired from your employeer.
and sincerely, is that what you have in america today?
We have those too, we just don't go as overboard. You can take two weeks vacation and be fine with your employer most of the time. We just don't start out with a month and proceed to 2 months throughout our careers like some Europeans do.
--Joey
Dude!
.
.
You are in for one HUGE rude awakening.
How do I put this. .
There have only been three countries which use the Eagle for its national symbol. The Roman empire, which was taken down by the Mongol hoards (Russia/Greater-Asia), Nazi Germany, where its back was broken in part by Russia, and a coalition of European and American forces. And now America, which also thinks it is invincible, and which will ALSO break its back on Asia.
I believe in patterns. Heck, even Nostrodamus saw this one coming, where he talked about globes of fire exploding from the heavens and the "yellow tide" covering the globe.
Since you (sort of) asked, the country I am from is Canada. And since you talk so mightily about how America comes riding to the aid of the impoverished, I'm going to remind you that Canada entered WWII a couple of YEARS before the US. --The US however, (in standard fashion), didn't enter the war until it had to, because it was busy making huge gobs of money selling arms and technology to the real combatants, (INCLUDING Nazi Germany!; Bush's grand dad made his family fortune selling to the Nazis. --He was hand-slapped for it after the war, but faced no real punishment. Typical. CNN won't have mentioned that.)
As for the Iraqi women kissing soldiers and all that good stuff. .
Sure. On day one. Sort of. (That statue falling and those cheering crowds, as any who searched a bit more deeply, would have discovered was a bit of clever photography and clever editing to make a small crowd of maybe 200 people look like thousands. But again, you'd have to dig a little to learn that, and those sold by state propaganda don't usually dig as a general rule.)
But honestly, you REALLY need to do some more reading about the current situation. The people shooting at US soldiers are NOT remnants of Saddam's military. They're regular people who hate the way they're being mis-treated, tortured, indiscriminately killed and generaly abused by their new masters. --Families who are pooling their resources to buy guns in order to protect their children and wives. There is no running water. There is no electricity. There is no public communications system, (Well, there WAS for a couple of days, until the US military told Betelco to shut down). There is no order in Iraq, because the US military is being horribly mismanaged. --Sure there are MANY well-meaning American soldiers over there who don't realize the true nature of the game they are caught in; most soldiers are just kids after all. But the real nature of the game is such that at the top levels, there is actually a desire for the chaos to remain.
--See, despite your arrogant words about US military might, despite your being saturated with propaganda, and despite your calous disrespect for the people of other nations or the deaths of civilians, you still talk with pride about wanting to help the world become a better place. As perverted and bent as you and your beliefs are as to how to achieve it, you still have the desire to be a good guy, and I respect that. Unfortunately, that is NOT how the people at the top of the power pyramid are motivated.
Chaos IS desired. American Death camps WILL come to exist as another push to wipe out all the Semitic (Jews and Arabs) peoples of the earth goes into full swing. Nazi Germany, as those in the know, realize, was a dry run. It was a test to see what could be gotten away with. The real game is only just beginning.
Though, as before, arrogance WILL be the Beast's undoing.
You think America is invincible?
Consider this: The Chinese have nukes. They have delivery systems. (They're planning a moon landing before the end of this very year.) They also have an army larger than the entire population of the United States. And that's before a draft! There aren't enough machine gun rounds to stop that kind of invasion force. (Just as the Nazis did not have enough r