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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.'"
Question for the knowledgeable: could VOIP companies invoke the WTO for anti-competitive practices?
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
phone companies in France, Germany, Egypt and Saudi Arabia have announced...Gotta love Ma Bell.
Which RBOCs would those be? BellFrance, German Bell, and Mideast Bell?
.... Some phone companies in Canada are tying to brand their services so that they don't sound like they're VoIP because of the negativity associated with these services.
s /TPStory/LAC/20051020/TWVOIP20/TPTechnology/?query =voip
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNew
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
As if it wasn't on the way anyway...
The carriers will then have a choice: let the encrypted traffic through, or restrict their customer's Internet use to only approved (and monitored) traffic.
It will be interesting to see which option various countries choose...
So less return on television advertising, thanks to the evolution of technology, and what future does this have for television entertainment, if the place to advertise isn't the tube? Product placement, I suppose. Let's have a surreptitious party on the show with people having what is undeniably a very good time and feature Heineken cans/bottles, perhaps have an actor say, "this Heineken beer is excellent, much more flavourful then other leading brands."
Harlo Wilcox, Don Wilson and Bill Goodwin, your kind we shall meet again.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
For instance, Cox Cable @Home explicitly says "No VPNs", but many users do anyway. It would be a simple matter for them to block IPSec traffic, or even regular UDP/500 traffic. (yes, there are SSL VPNs, blah blah blah). And you couldn't complain, because you signed the contract.
In other countries, not even Soviet Russia, there are State-owned Telcos, which have implicit or explicit Terms of Service. I'm sure the Telco in Saudi Arabia says things like "no porn, no homosexual activity, nothing critical of Islam" etc. They ALSO probably say "no VoIP".
Don't like it? Don't use the service... oh wait, you have to, because its a State owned monopoly. Oh well, strive for political change then.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I thought all of the phone companies qualify as common carriers and are not responsible for whats on their networks because they can't and shouldn't control it. Now that they have filtering ability for somethings they should be charged for every copied song and every piece of child porn moving on their wires.
Today's Wall Street Journal Online also has an article. It discusses the attempts US domestic carriers are making to block third party services, as well as limiting file sharing and other "hi bandwidth" uses. Fortunately the FCC has prevented the major carriers from blocking independent VOIP providers, but Europeans evidently have a different view, which is weird since our consumer internet connectivity sucks compared to theirs, let alone Asia.
Just shows what an overpriced cash cow voice is now.
Imagine how much harder physics would be if electrons had feelings! -Feynman, maybe
Wiretaps are a positive feature for users? No doubt governments/law enforcement get very warm and tingly over wiretaps but I can't see users warming to it quite so much.
Now spyware on the other hand, thats something that really does get users hot and bothered! ;)
What the fuck are you on about? These are foreign corporations that want to screw all the consumers, as usual, and as pioneered by the, oh-so-democratically great US corporations. It is the corporations which are the enemy here and the UN has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this. Furthermore, corporate sponsored entities, the WTO and WIPO do have everything to do with this, and yet, somehow, I do see brainwashed tools shreeking at the top of their lungs about the UN and not them.
It is a democratic duty of every citizen of any democratic nation, be it US, Canada, France, Germany or any other to oppose corporatists at every turn, because corporatism and democracy are mutually exclusive.
Now tell me that a company certified for China's National Networks is who we want to secure the general internet. Its almost as if they are saying YES to censorship and control. I'm not saying security is a bad thing, but pick how you do it with care...
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
The U.N. is comprised of many of these repressive anti-freedom regimes.
Well, at least as far as Germany and France are concerned, the "regimes" mentionend in the article are Vodafone and SFR, both cell phone providers. I can asure you that neither of them is member of the UN.
FTA...
Couldn't the FCC requirements that VoIP provide access to 911 emergency services be used as a legal precedent against carriers from degrading VoIP services in the US? If Vonage got in trouble for it, then any company that interferes with the call should be liable as well. Even if it isn't outright blocking the call, artificially deteriorating the quality could prevent proper communication in an emergency and endanger lives. Even jitter and latency in the call could possibly mean the difference between life and death in a critical situation.
Something TFA didn't make as clear as they could have-
The article is referring to phone companies that also have an ISP service trying to block voip data from travelling over their internet service.
That's as opposed to not allowing their land-line phone customers to recieve voip calls.
It just seemed like some people were confused.
It is rather simple: The stated and exclusive purpose of a corporation is to generate profit. The optimal condition to generate maximum profit is a government-protected monopoly. Therefore most corporations, once they reach certain size, actively work to undermine democratic processes, by attempting to lobby, bribe politicians and influence public opinion via affiliated media in order to fulfill their purpose to its full extent. Furthermore, once a corporation unduly grows in size, via acquisitions and mergers, with each expansion it becomes less and less a construct of a free market and more and more an ingredient of an oligarchy, as at each stage of consolidation the overall level of free market competition is lessened. The optimal political system for these corporations, once they are large enough, is fascism. Today, some corporations have accumulated more wealth and power then entire nations.
All of the above, combined, simply means that the purposes of corporations are at odds of those of cirizenry. The capitalist free market as well as the democratic societies in general are simply not equipped to deal with artificial "persons" of immesurable power and wealth, rivalling those of the representative governments. Corporations were never intended to be this way, nor does Adam Smith's theory take their existence properly into account as his was a theory of socially beneficial side-effects of personal greed aided by inventiveness to be aggressively and efficiently counter-balanced by competition. Thus large (especially multi-national) corporations are contrary to both the democratic credo of representative govenance and capitalist marketplace. Thereofre it is a duty of every believer in democracy and personal freedoms to oppose those who believe in governance by corproations for corporations and to insist that severe limits and restrictions be placed on the size and political activities of corporations. As corporatists believe the exact opposite, it is therefore a duty of every democratically oriented citizen of every country to oppose corporatists.
Is this the amusing explanation you wanted?
One of the first things they could do to prevent migration to VoIP is to include all the extra features like caller ID and other value added features in with basic phone service. VoIP is the future of telecommunications. It runs on data networks, and we all know data networks aren't going away anytime soon.
That is definately a good idea. Another would be to reduce or remove long-distance charges. Although there are various companies that charge lower long distance (many I'm sure using Voip), this needs to be much more widespread. I don't know how long-distance charging works, but it needs to be much more like how tier-1 ISPs peer for free with each other. If it already is, then it's just pure profit for them.. so they'll have to be willing to take a cut in that profit to prevent losing it altogher.
What would be even better would be to blur the line between VoIP and POTS. Provide digital service (even voip) right from the CO, then throw it on the TDM network. Provide some of the benefits of VoIP (multiple concurrent calls, digital signalling (ie, instant caller id)) without the problems that VoIP has on the internet (latency, outages).
At my small business, we use VoIP internally for our phone system, but also as a backup line. We have 3 voice POTS lines, which all hunt from our main number. The last one hunts to a VoIP 'wholesale' (no voicemail, call waiting, etc services -- our phone system does that stuff) number, where we can accept as many calls as we have bandwidth (and we have a decent chunk of bandwidth). We also use the VoIP line for outgoing long-distance calls, or if the POTS lines are all used up. This effectively gives us "unlimited" call handling capability, for much much much less than it would cost to have 3 or 6 or 10 more phone lines. We just pay a littler over a cent a minute, plus a couple dollars a month for a DID (local phone number). The phone companies have a way to go before they're going to be able to match that and that's probably what has them scared.
Of course, blocking VoIP seems very dumb. If my ISP was my phone company, and they blocked my VoIP calls, my response would be to get a new ISP -- not say "oh well, I guess I'll just pay more for a less-capable analog phone line". Not only are they driving away voice customers, but they're driving away their internet customers as well.
Speak before you think
Quite the oposite from France... Here in Québec, The two major Telcos wich are Bell Canada and Telus and the two major Cablecos wich are Videotron and Cogéco are all offering VOIP as we speak.
Since they are offering the service, I guess they would be very stupid to block it... Talk. about shooting yourself in the foot.
Today, companies are fighting any way they can to remain relevant in today's world. They can do that in two ways; Making the right moves at the right time to stay relevant like for example Koday did in the face of digital photography nearly 10 years ago OR forcing their clients to consider them relevant by screwing them when they don't have a choice (FOR NOW) like the RIAA and the CellCos do.
Sufice to say that this can only last for a given time and people remeber who screwed them...