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Russian Telco MTS Bans Skype, Other VoIP Services
An anonymous reader writes "MTS, one of the three largest mobile carriers in Russia, have been buying up smaller cable TV and Internet providers across the country, and besides the GSM/3G cellphone service they now also offer cable TV and home broadband Internet access. And their unified TOS [PDF] (Russian; mirror) for home broadband now says: "3.4.4. The customer may not use the Services for the purpose of transferring voice over the Internet; Skype and other similar software is forbidden." (screenshot). Really, why would you need to phone over the Internet, comrade, when you have a perfectly good cellphone [from MTS, presumably]?" Can anyone out there provide a good translation?
Yes.
Russia is still as fucked as it ever was. When the people who live their yearn for the good old days of queuing for potatoes and strict censorship you know nothing ever changed.
First, the translation is correct enough not to care.
Second, this language got into ToS before MTS buying the cable company and it is not known to be enforced - before or after the MTS deal. Reason for this thing was to reduce the size of bribes toregulating agencies, as the previous ISP had no license for voice-over-landlines and prohibiting Skype gave them a bragaining point in the bribe negotiations. Enforcing it wa, of course, superfluous.
MTS has promised to fix the ToS. We are waiting. Well, I am not - I use and old, medium-size, nice and predictable ISP. what do I care about MTS copper internet.
Lots of German providers do this too (making VoIP a ToS violation), especially on plans which are for smartphones only... the big 5 gigabyte plans which allow tethering usually don't have this restriction... maybe the same is true here.
Tovarishch, that is why is called interNYET,
3.4. Network Subscriber is prohibited to:
3.4.1. Use Network Subscriber Equipment for purposes other than personal, family, home, orfor other purposes related to running a business.
3.4.2. Retransmit, perform (copy), or use radio and TV programs in any other manner (except for personal, noncommercial use by Subscriber).
3.4.3. Perform other actions listed in Part 6 "Subscriber's Rights and Obligations".
3.4.4. Use Services to transmit voice over the data networks, including transmission over the Internet, i.e. Subscriber is prohibited from using software such as Skype and similar, to transmit voice over the Internet.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
free market or back to the censorship? I don't know, but it doesn't sound good...
This is refreshed evidence of the ability of the internet to influence politics and history, of course. Discussions of net neutrality aren't often rooted in socio-political terms; actions like these demonstrate the need for neutrality. If there's a very concrete, very specific definition of what the internet is and what the internet isn't, the rest of the internet can take actions against entities and networks that "aren't the internet".
The political dimension of the net neutrality comes into play here. When laws and policy in the US are cemented in place that allow private and government entities to arbitrarily discriminate against traffic, it becomes very difficult for the internet as a whole to maintain any kind of defense. China, Russia, and numerous other countries around the world want anything BUT a neutral internet. It's hard for the US, for example, to argue for neutrality in other countries along political dimensions, while caving to corporate, anti-competitive interests internally.
Crappy thought formation here -- sorry for that. The essence is that unless the US takes the high road on neutrality, it will become less and less ubiquitous in the future, as more and more countries follow the downward spiral of fragmentation.
I am visiting China right now, and I can tell you that internet access here is just plain WEIRD. Imagine an internet in the US with a thousand provider firewalls and packet paywalls everywhere, twisting in the winds of contracts between provider and highest bidder. The Great Firewall of China? How would you like to be dealing with the Shitty Firewall of Comcast-St.Louis, instead? And then the wall after that?
A way to increase income from international phone calls.
Can be circumvented by letting the internet phone provider calling you on a land line (free) or a cellular (with a small surcharge).
To be honest with you, whoever wrote this, can't write proper Russian, because there is double meaning there, which I will try to untangle correctly
3.4 Clients are forbidden:
3.4.1 To use client equipment in manner that is different from personal use, family use, home use. Also clients are forbidden from using the equipment for purposes such as business.
(this sentence, combined with the top 'Clients are forbidden', made it unclear whether business use is forbidden or not, but I believe it says business use is forbidden.)
3.4.2 To redistribute (forward), (replay) copy, and use in any other manner TV and radio programs (except in cases of non-commercial use by the client).
3.4.3 To take any other action, which are defined in the section VI "the rights and obligations" (section of regulations).
(whoever wrote this, needs to have brain untangled, it's all mushed up).
3.4.4 To use these services for the purposes of transmitting voice information via the information network, including the Internet network, i.e., the client is forbidden from using such applications, as Skype and other similar applications for voice transmission over the Internet.
---
In short: you can only use this service for your personal/family purposes, not for business. You can't share TV and radio programs (there is nothing about parts of it, this was NOT written by a professional lawyer), and you can't use Skype.
AFAIC this is clearly monopoly control over the networks and trust me on this: this monopoly is completely government supported. There were many laws passed in Russia in the recent years to make sure there is as little available competition as possible.
Hey, what are governments for, right?
Russians love Skype like everyone else does for obvious financial reasons. MTS was basically the Microsoft of RU GSM until Beeline came along and they're the major two. You might be thinking that someone could just change operators but although they're all enemies they work in unison on certain things.
Case in point "Roaming" . In USA I presume you can use your phone in Texas or New York and pay the same rates. Not so In RU, a change was made a few years ago with some sort of internal roaming. All GSM operators did this at once so you couldn't just change operators to avoid it. Basically when you travelled outside your oblast (state) where the SIM was registered as soon as you were out you'd get a welcome to roaming SMS. This friendly message basically says now that you're outside your oblast you are "roaming" as if you're in a different country.
It's a good way to increase your profits actually, just consider Moscow a different country to St Petersburg or Sochi or whatever and charge accordingly. But it only works when all operators do it together.
Having said that most Russians are pretty materialistic now and like western life and don't really want a change at this point in time despite the corruption and stuff. So nobody is going to care about whatever MTS is doing for more than a few minutes. Of course this isn't what they say publically but it's how they are. Life was more communal before because everyone was equally poor. Everyone being most people. The best apartments and conditions would go to the well placed people in the communist system. And many people who grew up in this time are rather angry at society from memories of poverty... case in point the huge number of communaleces... 3 families, maybe 7 people sharing a one bedroom small 40 metre one room apartment with one kitchen / bathroom. Worse if it's made of Kruschevs temporary panel junk. It's a guaranteed way for all hell to break loose.
there is no ban from MTS. there was a mistake: this is an old version of Agreement from subsidiary. nobody looks in Agreement. proof: http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/telecom/129943/
The same clause is present in swedish 3G TOS from for example Teliasonera. I'm forbidden to use any voip service on my android phone, although I don't know if they actively try to detect such use.
When the people who live their yearn for the good old days of queuing for potatoes and strict censorship you know nothing ever changed.
Okay, and now a translation from that into English?
When the people who live their yearn for the good old days of queuing for potatoes and strict censorship you know nothing ever changed.
Okay, and now a translation from that into English?
Aye, commie, ya wanna live like we doin' where we liv', ya better get rid of tha' commie attitude of yours.
Clicked pie.
At least there will be more tunnel users: http://www.mizu-voip.com/Products/VoIPTunnel.aspx :)
there is no relevance in between flat rate billing and the problem you made out of your ass. net neutrality is needed so that the isps will not be going deciding what their subscribers can see and what they can not.
Read radical news here
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It translates to either: Give me money or I f*** you comrade or Give me money I'm done f****** you comrade. I believe it is the later.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Right, in either scenario they win.
Not that i normally approve of federal government intervention, but some industries do need to be regulated to ensure fairness of service to the citizens. Industries that are fundamental to our way of life ( i wont use the term required however, as we don't NEED them for life.. but it is ingrained into modern society now, just as running water and electricity is )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
You obviously have never been to Russia, before or after. People remembering the old days are fond of the fact of being in a country that was a superpower, where scientific achievements of all kinds were within reach, where schools were top notch and housing even if it was kind of crappy, was a better deal than the current prices for housing around the Moscow area. But that aside, I still think Russia has a bright future, their economy is still growing, they still have a good manufacturing base plus lots of natural resources.
Yes, the housing was truly top notch, I fondly recall visiting friends living in their lavish 5 room apartments.
But wait, what's this? 5 doorbells next to the door?
What is that you say? Five families have to share this 1 bedroom, 1 living room, 1 study and 2 kids rooms, as well as this one bathroom and kitchen?
Only 15 people in this one family 5 room apartment, you say? They should be happy they weren't living on the street!
Or perhaps we can remember fondly stories told by our grandparents, who in the 60's got to live in ultra-modern german-built single-family villas.
And share them with the same number of families as there were rooms in the house....
Or maybe how happy they were when the kind and all powerful Soviet government, in the 70's finally gave them the opportunity to move their family of 5 into a 2 room apartment, on the fifth floor, without an elevator... Carrying that stroller up those five flights of steps was a bitch, I recall my grandma saying.
Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with all the Soviet-defenders these days. That shit should never be allowed to happen again.
Oh wait, Putin is working on bringing it all back now! Yay!
Actually, when they yearn for the days of queuing for potatoes and strict censorship, you notice that something can be worse than that.
Russia will bring us the future. And this time even for real.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In the Russian warehouse, you can only buy red vases.
In the American warehouse, you have the free choice.
But what is it good for if all vases have holes in them?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Nostalgia is a bitch. She only tells you the good stories of the good ol' days.
Like, remember how much fun your college years were? And your childhood? Oh how much you want to relive those days! How simple life was back then! Until you remember the tests, the lack of freedom, the petty little things that made life unbearable compared to now?
Personally, I think people yearning for the good ol' days just miss the times when it didn't matter jack whether you worked or not, you had your job and as long as you were party loyal, you had it for life. Ahh, how simple life was back then.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My time in Moscow, I broke away, used the Metro, visited people and institutions in the snow. They had a hard time, they'd fixed things, and it was 'normal'. They grudgingly respected their country, enjoyed life, worked hard and did intensive office-politics, and were forever trying to build businesses. How bad is that?
for net neutrality!
For whoever can read Russian: http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/telecom/129943/ For those who can't - "Marina Akulich, blog-secretary of MTS, this is an official company comment - at this time company does not prohibit using any VoIP services such as Skype and the likes. Obviously, installation of such software is not blocked an all corresponding services are granted at full scale. The issue came out of Comstar-Direct (probably an acquisition done by MTS) company who did not have a license to provide voice communications over Internet (translator: that's a weird case of Russian licensing to you). All customer agreements are being updated now and this paragraph will be removed from all new version of such agreements". Bottom line: corporate SNAFU.
You are completely right, except for one wee little problem: in the "new" Russia, people still do all of these things except now it is not the Stalinist mismanagement but utter poverty that forces them to do so with no prospect for any improvement in foreseeable future with the added bonus of having lost free medical care and free education.
Most new apartments and houses are waaaaay out of reach of most families so only the top 5% or so lives it up like royalty, which if kept up for a long enough time will likely result in something stronger then mere "nostalgia" and the "lining up against walls" bit might be in vogue again.
Hence why Putin is so popular, most Russians came to believe that capitalism and democracy are essentially an american scam to get them to give up everything which they once had (medical care, education, super-power status, USSR, Soviet Bloc etc) in exchange for a bunch of worthless slogans from slick snake oil salesmen and then watch everything not nailed down getting stolen by a few sociopathic "oligarchs" to the cheers and back-patting by the Western "free press", press which then promptly turned - froth at the snout - on anyone trying to oppose the new feudal order as an "enemy of freedom and democracy". And so Putin exploits that sentiment by offering to star in this sad, old re-run in the role of the "patriotic strong-man to the rescue" who will oppose the West-sponsored thieves and restore national pride.
And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.
Then you put some dirt in it, a saucer under it, and plant flowers.
In the Russian warehouse, you can only buy red vases.
In the American warehouse, you have the free choice.
But what is it good for if all vases have holes in them?
How are you going to put flower in those vases if they don't have holes?
But when I have to do all that myself, what do I need the vase for?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
No, he was talking about potato queues. They looked exactly like WWII-time bread lines, but were a fundamentally different thing. Potatoes are easy to store (city apartment buildings even had underground storage space specifically allocated for that), and farmers often sold them at a massive discount when they had surplus after the harvest. Regular grocery stores or farmers' markets didn't have the capacity for this, so usually there will be a potato truck outside a grocery store, with a long line of people buying.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Someone forgot to send out the memo about the "perks" of Freedom from Stalinist oppression; like poverty, unemployment, more corruption, crime, and more bullshit. Also, an interesting thought: back in the communist time, people knew who the enemy was - the man in the distinctly KGB-looking coat, and sometimes in a less subtle uniform.
The thing is; change for the better takes time, and Russians are not known for their patience or forward thinking. At least that's the opinion of this Russian... heh
on the fifth floor, without an elevator
Having a elevator is not a right... Lived on the 5'th floor in a building from 1908 that where protected so no elevator was allowed to be installed...
Sure it was a bit rough the first 2-3 weeks but running up and down the stairs a few times per day made wonders... Free training, why complain.....