Having made calls using VoIP without issue for for ages I was baffled as to why out of nowhere I had been having lots of issues. Sound quality has reduced and latency issues have become markedly noticeable. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, such as 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, more established interests in the telecoms industry see it differently - and are doing something about it.
Consultation
Well aware of what has happened elsewhere the United Kingdom telecoms regulator Ofcom took the unusual step in February of announcing that it will look at the growing VoIP industry and report next month on whether new laws are necessary to protect 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 it. But the prediction is for that to go up 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 incumbent 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.
Telcos in the United States as well as other countries are hesitant to have their bandwidth used by traffic from which they earn no revenue and have been challenged over similar alleged incidents of VoIP blocking. Barring VoIP traffic is a challenge but not illegal and barring precise kinds of internet traffic is going up.
The European based VoIP giant Skype who are now owned by the pre-eminent auction site eBay has been particularly controversial. Skype is used by over 75m people. But not everyone wants Skype on their network.
Skype is considered by a lot of people to pose a potential security threat because it creates an encrypted channel out of the network and forms supernodes that sit on it and set up VoIP calls. There is big 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.