[IP] Vodafone Blocks VoIP
Begin forwarded message:
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: July 14, 2005 7:28:22 PM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Vodafone Blocks VoIP
Reply-To: dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
2005-07-11
Vodafone Blocks VoIP
By Gary Kim
<http://www.voipweekly.com/news_detail.php?news_id=162>
Good news: Vodafone Germany is dramatically increasing the amount of
mobile data users can send and receive, says Arne Hess, in a post.
Bad news: Vodafone is blocking independent VoIP providers. Hess
notes: "I have no idea yet how they do it in detail, but I can
imagine they've started to block typical VoIP ports."
Poster Voker Weber on Wowe dot net confirms that post: "Vodafone is
also starting to block VoIP traffic," says Weber. "That shows that
the mobile providers are in serious trouble defending their
imbalanced pricing structure."
Yet another poster points out that Vodafone also blocks access to the
Skype Web site as "inappropriate content." The walled garden approach
also extends to video services. "Now, Vodafone (in the United
Kingdom) is trying to defend its position for blocking all video
content that isn't Vodafone approved," notes poster Mike Masnick.
Vodafone isn’t alone. Masnick also points out that Clearwire, which
has struck a deal with Bell Canada that makes Bell Canada Clearwire’s
authorized VoIP provider, hasn't "been paying attention to the whole
‘network neutrality’ debate or the fact that an ISP has been fined
for blocking Vonage," says Masnick. "Instead, Clearwire proudly
states that they will block any application they don't like —
including non-Bell Canada VoIP and any streaming audio or video
offering."
"They claim they need to do this ‘to ensure network performance
reliability,’ but can't explain how it's okay for them to offer VoIP,
but Vonage must be blocked," says Masnick.
Of course, there’s "good" mobile VoIP, and "bad" mobile VoIP. It’s
hard to see how fixed-mobile convergence is going to work, in either
the enterprise or consumer market segments, unless VoIP over mobile
devices is enabled. IDC analyst Alex Slawsby says there will be a
gradual switch in wireless calling to VoIP technology. "I think we'll
start to see it expanding in both enterprise and consumer worlds,"
Slawsby says.
So, from some vantage points, "good" VoIP is the walled garden type,
where a carrier can control its use. "Bad" VoIP is third-party VoIP,
accessed by an end user from the public Internet. Skype, for example,
already is offering Skype for Wi-Fi-enabled smart phones and personal
digital assistants. Skype also has an alliance with the cell phone
maker Motorola, raising the possibility that Skype might edge toward
mainstream phones, but immediately only making Skype conversations
possible on portable handsets used with a Wi-Fi connection.
That said, cellular handsets that double as VoIP phones appear to be
coming. Motorola plans at least one phone will be sold to the high-
end corporate market through Avaya. The phone will provide cellular
GSM (global system for mobile communications) service as usual. But
in the vicinity of a company's network, built-in Wi-Fi connectivity
is used to connect a call via VoIP instead of GSM.
NTT DoCoMo of Japan began offering a similar VoIP-enabled handset to
corporate customers last year.
So the issue is whether mobile operators come to see VoIP as a major
threat to their voice revenues or a necessary evil as they strive to
build data revenues, which might well require openness to Web-based
content accessed from the public Internet. So far, the walled garden
approach seems to be in favor.
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>
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