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VoIP Backlash From Phone Companies
denis-The-menace writes "An article from the online edition of IEEE Spectrum says phone companies in France, Germany, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced they will block VoIP calls on their networks. Using new software from Narus Inc., the carriers can detect data packets belonging to VoIP applications and block the calls. Gotta love Ma Bell." From the article: "Narus's software does far more than just frustrate Skype users. It can also diagnose, and react to, denial-of-service attacks and dangerous viruses and worms as they wiggle through a network. It makes possible digital wiretaps, a capability that carriers are required by law to have. However, these positive applications for Narus's software may not be enough to make Internet users warm to its use. 'Protecting its network is a legitimate thing for a carrier to do ... But it's another thing for a Comcast to charge more if I use my own TiVo instead of the personal video recorder they provide, or for Time Warner, which owns CNN, to charge a premium if I want to watch Fox News on my computer.'"
Skype is encrypted and P2P. Yet they can still block it.
Also, if your VoIP service ever uses real phone lines, the telco can easily block it.
If this happened in the US, though, it would be an illegal abuse of their monopoly powers. When they start censoring certain data, they lose their common carrier status as well, so they become liable for all the child porn, viruses, illegal movie downloads, etc. that they transfer. Probably not a road they want to go down.
However, I guess cable companies in the US aren't common carriers, so they can (and do) block other VoIP. Someone needs to sue them for this -- it's absolutely ridiculous. When you break part of the Internet, you aren't an ISP anymore. You're a Content That We Cram Up Your Ass Service Provider... just like cable companies are already.
Personally, I use Speakeasy DSL which does nothing but route bits to and from my machine. That's the way the Internet should be!
My other car is first.
Skype doesn't use random ports and protocols does it? It needs to handshake the two programs before the encrypted data transfer starts, which probably makes it relatively easy to block at the router level.
That said, it shouldn't be impossible to masquerade VOIP data as something like a first-person shooter data stream (many of which have voice-chat already integrated), or by some other means that would result in the ISP/Telco blocking legitimate users as well and raising their angst level.
Fighting technology is a losing proposition for conventional telcos, so they better find a way to work with users rather than against them...
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
I work in one of these oldfashioned phone companies. Due to our location international charges is a large part of our intake. Therefore we dont like Skype much. In fact we'd like this whole VoIP thing to be un-invented.
We tried looking into blocking and it's bad karma all the way. Trust me, the old guys loved the idea but the publicity would kill us. In the end we have to do VoIP ourself. Better to loose business to yourself than to somebody else. This of course provides me with interesting work so I'm not complaining ;-)
TCAP-Abort