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)."

Comments

Correction

[borgdows]

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...

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

The Slashdot infidels are NOT using up all our bandwidth! They can NOT Slashdot us! We are, in fact, slashdotting Slashdot as we speak!

-- Iraq/SCO Information Minister

I've got some experience with VoIP

[WegianWarrior]

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!

Re:I've got some experience with VoIP

[VirexEye]

You were just waiting for a reason to gloat that you have a fiancee to the slashdot crowd weren't you?

Re:I've got some experience with VoIP

[Timesprout]

He probably wont for much longer if she reads /. and discovers he considers her a 'girlfriend' and he's too cheap to phone her :-)

Same for lots of places in the Third world

[Raindeer]

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. :-)

Might As Well Do It Right

[Bloodmoon1]

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.

Corporate Use

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

obligatory SpeakFreely plug

[nadaou]

[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.

Re:well no kidding

[Ex-MislTech]

Funny you say that, the data lines that drive the phone network
can be used to drive the data network that is the internet .
In certain areas ATM/Sonet OC fiber carries both voice and data
down the same fiber .

Packetized voice has been a reality since they completed the step called dial off load .

I worked in one of the failed VoIP labs for Cisco in Herndon
Virginia, and helped make a 48 million error free
calls test go down at Sonus on an old test box called an
Inet Spectra before going to work at Cisco.

Companies like Sonus beat cisco in the dial offload game in coutries as critical as japan .

Once Cisco realized they had laid a golden egg they start hack and slashing their VoIP projects like a butcher gone mad .

The facility in Herndon lost half its staff even though it wrote the only Universal Realtime SS7
International Gateway protocol converter in the world with software . Trying to make it a Media Gateway Controller on top of all that made it very unwieldy .

Sonus was smart and held the call state on DSP's that could be dynaically reprogrammed, while cisco tried to hold it in RAM on Sun boxes .

It failed miserably for cisco, but Sonus was making 8,000 calls per second on a 1 rack box taking up a little less than half a standard 7 foot rack .

It was done at the local office for the long haul
portion , and they are just now sorting out how
the last mile is going to be done .

Different companies want to do it different ways .

That is why they call VoIP "convergence", it blending
the lines where separation was sought before .

As for it being newer, hell it was built on top of
the phone network, the protocols are really the only
so called "new" portion , and it was derived about
22 years ago with early Arpanet .

Moving from switched telephony to packet telephony on a
global scale is going to cause a HUGE shake up in long distance
and telecommunications .

Think cell phone running on something like Wi-MAX , and ppl
being able to put up their own repeater .

I am hoping it is based on UWB if possible .

The holy cash cow of long distance has just been sent down
the river, and ridiculous rates are RIP .

We are starting to see the turning point, we are seeing it
cheaper to implement IPv6 in third world countries than
the old switched networks .

Scale that to 6 billion+ ppl world wide, and yeah its news .

p.s.: sorry for the DOT BOMB story, just felt the urge to
share some pain ;)

Peace,
Ex-MislTech