China Telecom Blocking Skype Calls

Retrospeak writes "According to a Reuters report China is starting to block Skype service in Shenzhen, an affluent southern city of China. Local Chinese media report that China Telecom has plans to eventually block the service throughout its coverage area nationwide. Could this have something to do with the fact that China Telecom charges close to $1 per minute for calls to United States and Europe?" From the article: " A China Telecom spokesman had no comment on the reports about the Shenzhen blockage, but gave a broader view. 'Under the current relevant laws and regulations of China, PC-to-phone services are strictly regulated and only China Telecom and (the nation's other fixed-line carrier) China Netcom are permitted to carry out some trials on a very limited basis,' he said."

Comments

Boy, its come down then

[Nom du Keyboard]

China Telecom charges close to $1 per minute for calls to United States and Europe

Boy, it has come down then. When I was in China a few years ago it was $2/minute to the USA. It was a bargain to get to Japan and have calls cost only $1/minute.

Australia, last December by comparison was about 4 cents/minute on a phone card.

The cause may lie elsewhere

[A Dafa Disciple]

Could this have something to do with the fact that China Telecom charges close to $1 per minute for calls to United States and Europe?

As the article stated:

China routinely blocks access to Web sites on politically sensitive subjects such as the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square

I'd say it has more to do with the fact that people (mainly Falun Gong practitioners) like to use services such as Skype to tell Chinese mainlanders, who don't have access to free (as in speech) media, the truth about the persecution that's going on there.

not because of money

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, they are blocking because Skype is more or less a peer to peer protocol, and it's very hard to monitor the conversations.

Anyway, this is the day that the great firewall really becomes useful (in a painfully annoying way)

by the way, calls from china to the US are not 1 dollar per minute. nobody uses those services. everyone buys IP cards for maybe 2 cents a minute or so. FYI

I am talking to Shenzhen NOW on skype

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

Are you SURE it's blocked? I have colleagues in Shenzhen and HK and just finished a skype conf call with several of them and didn't have any issues getting through. Granted, it wouldn't surprise me given China's often ham handed attempts to control communications infrastructure. But before we go accusing them of something that wouldn't be so surprising, let's make sure it's actually happening and not some temporary glitch. Cheers,

Re:I am talking to Shenzhen NOW on skype

[wangxiaohu]

This is true. I have my family in Shenzhen and I study in Canada. We phone each others on Skype frequently and found no problem. BTW, calling from China to Canada is about few cents per minutes, not $1.

Re:I am talking to Shenzhen NOW on skype

[nihaopaul]

i'm in china also and i buy IP cards to phone my Girlfriend in atlanta, i buy the cards off the street with printed price of 100rmb (i pay 25rmb) and i normally get ~60minutes.

((25/60)/8.09) = 0.051503914297486608982282653481665 usd/minute. of course its state run, but also think about atleast 4 million people using that service in this city (shanghai), but when i can't be fucked to go out and buy a card off the street i'll just fireup skype and hope it doesn't consume up all my processor io whilst i work and talk.

Re:Sad Future of Broadband Access in other countri

[DJCF]

You didn't see our country piling innocent arab-americans into prisons after 9/11??

Erm, yes I did.

In short, no, we don't go after commies anymore.

Oh, and yes , you do.

Only SkypeOut is blocked

[hnjjz]

Only PC-to-Phone calls are blocked. PC-to-PC calls are not affected. Phone service is regulated in China with China Telecom and China Netcom being the only 2 companies licensed to provide fixed-line phone service. It's under this pretense that China Telecom is blocking Skype PC-to-Phone calls. This sort of tactics to block potential competitors is not really surprising. A few years ago, China Mobile and China Unicom (the 2 cellular phone service providers in China) tried to prevent China Telecom and China Netcom (the fixed-line phone service providers) from introducing a limited range wireless technology called "Little Smart" using the fact that they were the only officially licensed mobile phone providers.

Re:Nope

[ScrewMaster]

Yeah ... I can just see SBC helping Skype out with this one.

The big boys would just as soon see Skype and Vonage and all the rest of this newfangled foolishness simply disappear. That's apparently true in China as well as the U.S.