Friday, November 25, 2011

Complaint against SK Telecom & KT for Blocking VoIP over 3G (Using DPI)

      
We have seen this before (China, KPN, MetroPCS, TeliaSonera) - and here is another example of how mobile operators are trying either to protect their voice revenues or increase ARPU from what they consider as a "premium service" (see also yesterday’s post on Application based Charging - here).

My People
Yoon Ja-young reports to The Korea Times that "Telecommunications companies here have been preventing mobile Voice over Internet Protocol (mVoIP) .. which eat into their profits and weigh on the network ..The Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ) and Jinbo Network, the country’s leading NGOs, filed a complaint against SK Telecom and KT, the two biggest industry players, with the Fair Trade Commission and Korea Communications Commiss .. They also submitted a petition to the National Human Rights Commission seeking restrictions on deep packet inspection (DPI), technology which enables monitoring the communication of users" (see "Is it Possible to Block Skype with DPI ?" - here and "The Challenges of Maintaining a Current DPI "Signatures File" - here)
"Mobile Internet phone services, such as “My People” operated by Daum and “Skype,” send voice through the data networks of mobile carriers. Smartphone users welcomed these services as they can make free phone calls. Instead of levying charges on consumers, mVoIP firms consider advertisements as their income source. SK Telecom and KT however, have banned such services in their customer contracts, except for those who subscribe to the premium data packages costing 54,000 won ($46) or more a month"

An SK Telecom representative said that ".. few countries which fully allowed mVoIP, such as the United States and the Netherlands [here], saw a raise in mobile rates ..  it is impossible to intercept communications with DPI technology. “It only analyzes the type of packets that pass the network. There is no way to analyze the content included in the packet. It is unrelated with private information or privacy
   
See "Carriers under fire for banning free Internet telephone services" - here.

7 comments:

  1. I would say SK Telecoms and KT are at the losing end. VoIP was banned in many countries in the beginning but finally these governments had to give up the battle. The every increasing demand of Ooma, Axvoice (www.axvoice.comn), Packet 8 and many others will force all the SKs and KTs to adopt the new technology.

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  4. Smartphone users welcomed these services as they can make free phone calls. Instead of levying charges on consumers, mVoIP firms consider advertisements as their income source. SK Telecom and KT however, have banned such services in their customer contracts, except for those who subscribe to the premium data packages costing 54,000 won ($46) or more a month

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