Do ISPs Block VoIP?
Having been an avid VoIP user for for a good few years I was baffled as to why all of a sudden I had been having so many problems. Sound quality has reduced and latency issues have increased significantly. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, including France and Mexico, have been noting similar problems since last year. For a while Voice over IP might seem like a great deal for the average person, entrenched interests in the telecoms industry view it differently - and are taking action against it.
Consultation
Well aware of what has happened elsewhere the United Kingdom telecoms regulator Ofcom took the unusual action in February of announcing that it will look at the burgeoning VoIP 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 occurring in the UK; only about 000 customers use VoIP. But the forecast is for that to rise by 4m in the next six months.
And VoIP barring takes place in other countries, more often than not those where there is still only a single telecoms company. In Saudi Arabia, for example national carrier Saudi Telecom is using software from US supplier Narus to bar all Voice over IP phone calls.
Telecommunication companies in the US and other countries are reluctant to have their bandwidth encroached on by traffic from which they earn no revenue and have been challenged over similar alleged incidents of internet telephony barring. Hindering internet telephony traffic is complicated but does not break the law and blocking specific types of internet traffic is going up.
Luxembourg-based VoIP provider Skype now owned by the pre-eminent auction site eBay has been particularly controversial. Skype is used by over 75m people. But increasingly a lot of people do not want Skype on their network.
Skype is seen by a lot of people to pose a potential security threat because it creates an encrypted tunnel out of the network and forms supernodes that sit on it and connect VoIP calls. There is considerable debate about how much bandwidth such supernodes eat up. There have been claims that in supernode mode, Skype could possibly saturate a 100 Mbps line.
