Do ISPs Block VoIP?
Having made calls using VoIP without issue for for a good few years I was baffled as to why recently I had been having so many problems. The quality of sound has gone right down and latency issues have very noticeable. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, including France and Mexico, have been noting similar issues since last year. For a while Voice over IP might seem like a good deal for the average person, entrenched interests in the telecommunication industry see it differently – and are taking action against it.
Consultation
knowledgeable of what has happened in other countries the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom took the decisive step in February of announcing that it will look at the burgeoning VoIP industry and report next month on whether new laws are necessary 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 proof this is happening in the UK; only about 000 customers use it. But the forecast is for that to rise by 3m in the next six months.
And VoIP barring takes place in other countries, often those where there is still only a single incumbent telecoms company. In Saudi Arabia, for instance national carrier Saudi Telecom is using software from US supplier Narus to bar all VoIP phone calls.
Telcos in the United States as well as other countries are hesitant 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 blocking. Blocking VoIP traffic is complicated but does not break the law and blocking 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 increasingly a lot of people do not want Skype on their network.
Skype is considered by many to pose a potential security risk as it creates an encrypted channel out of the network and forms supernodes that sit on a network and connect internet telephony calls. There is huge debate about how much bandwidth such supernodes use. There have been claims that in supernode mode, Skype could possibly saturate a 100 Mbps line.
