Having been an avid VoIP user for for a good few years I was perplexed as to why all of a sudden I had been having lots of issues. The quality of sound has reduced and latency issues have become markedly noticeable. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, including France and Mexico, having issues since last year. For a while VoIP 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
knowledgeable of what has happened in the rest of the world the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom took the unusual step in February of announcing that it will look at the growing 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 proof 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 happens in other countries, often 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 bar all Voice over IP phone calls.
Telcos in the US as well as other countries are hesitant to have their bandwidth encroached on by traffic from which they receive no funds and have been challenged over similar alleged incidents of internet telephony barring. Blocking VoIP traffic is a challenge but not illegal and barring specific kinds of internet traffic is going up.
The European based VoIP giant Skype who are now owned by 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 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 VoIP calls. There is huge debate about how much bandwidth such supernodes consume. There have been warnings that in supernode mode, Skype may even saturate a 100 Mbps line.