Are Internet Service Providers Blocking VoIP?
October 16th, 2008Having used VoIP problem free for for a good few years I was confused as to why out of nowhere I had been having lots of issues. Sound quality has massively deteriorated and latency issues have become markedly noticeable. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, including Spain and Mexico, have been noting similar problems since last year. For a while VoIP might seem like a good deal for the average person, more established interests in the telecoms industry view it differently - and are trying to make a stand.
Consultation
knowledgeable of what has happened elsewhere the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom took the decisive step in February of announcing that it will look at the increasing Voice over IP industry and report next month on whether new laws are needed to shield it. The consultation document says: “VoIP service providers have expressed concern that their ability to provide a reliable service may be impacted by internet access providers (ISPs) selectively degrading or blocking their VoIP traffic.”
Ofcom says it has no evidence this is happening in the UK; only about 000 customers use Voice over IP services. But the forecast is for that to rise by 4m in the next six months.
And VoIP blocking occurs in other countries, more often than not those where there is still only a single telecoms company. In Saudi Arabia, for instance national carrier Saudi Telecom is using software from US supplier Narus to block all Voice over IP phone calls.
Telecommunication companies in the US as well as other countries are reluctant to have their bandwidth taken up by traffic from which they earn no revenue and have been challenged over similar alleged incidents of VoIP barring. Hindering VoIP traffic is technically difficult but not illegal and barring precise kinds of internet traffic is on the increase.
The European based VoIP giant Skype who are now owned by eBay has been particularly controversial. Skype is used by 75m people. But not everyone wants Skype on their network.
Skype is considered by a lot of people to pose a potential security risk as it creates an encrypted tunnel out of the network and forms supernodes that sit on a network and connect internet telephony calls. There is considerable debate about how much bandwidth such supernodes eat up. There have been warnings that in supernode mode, Skype may even saturate a 100 Mbps line.