May 23, 2007
Internet VoIP comes under Govt. Scrutiny
Very interesting article on Voice IP in Vietnam. Many people in Vietnam that make internet telephone calls outside the country, whether it be with Skype, USVoiz, or VietVoiz, have no idea that they are breaking the law. You are only allowed to use a VoIP service whose server is located in Vietnam. The company must also have the ever elusive, hard to get, telecom license.
Skype, USVoiz and VietVoiz do not have legal authority to allow calls from Vietnam to other countries. The servers for these companies are located outside of Vietnam. Hence, any calls made to/from the US tend to have poor connections, even with Skype. Now, you can make computer to computer calls, that is legal here. For me, this tends to be clear regardless of the country whether it be the US, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Israel, or Kenya. Once I make a telephone call with the providers mentioned above, the calls are no longer clear.
Government scrutiny of this sector is now showing that the big three IT companies; VNPT, FPT and Viettel, are beginning to flex their muscles and take control of this lucrative market.
Be weary of that next internet telephone call to the States, you are breaking the law (^_^).
Go to article here -> Internet telephony comes under gov’t scrutiny
(Source: ThanhNien)
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Kevin,
Thanks for the head’s up. It is kind of odd to see that there is a distinction between a VOIP to a POTS and a VOIP to VOIP call. Any thoughts on why? Is it due to the loss of tax revenue that is assesed when someone uses skype to call a landline?
Money, that’s why
A friend with another VOIP company told me that the government wants to strictly regulate this market b/c of the profit potential.
VOIP to VOIP are normally free services. VOIP to POTS involves money/fees. Money, money, money
Makes sense… so would the opportunity to be for a company to give a rev share to the goverment for a exclusive VOIP license? From what I last heard, Skype was huge in VT so if you are a small player, this could be away to compete against the large players.
I forgot how many telecom licenses were given out, not many. New start ups decided to ‘borrow’ another company’s telecom license until they can get their own. Normally takes 5 years I think. My friend wanted to set a telecom up, found a partner in Vietnam but then lost his partner in the US.
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This sort of thing is why the economy and the government of Vietnam are so fscked up.
In the future everything will be VOIP to VOIP. Especially as more of the mobile phones begin to do IP and send the voice data over the IP. I don’t see how they can tell whether a call is VOIP to VOIP anyway. They have no idea how I am terminating the call on my end. If you dial my phone number from a VOIP phone connected to my server in the US from VN it looks like you are dialing a standard PSTN number (and you are) but I terminate it to my VOIP phone and it never goes over the PSTN. So I don’t see how this is in any way technically enforceable. Of course, that has never stopped the government there from enforcing whatever they want in the past.
[...] Internet VoIP comes under Government Scrutiny [...]