The VoIP Backlash: New Software Lets Phone Companies Block VoIP Calls

[mandy]

Internet-based telephony saves consumers money by bypassing traditional carriers—but new software lets the carriers block those pennies-per-minute calls

A seven-year-old Mountain View, Calif., company, Narus Inc., has devised a way for telephone companies to detect data packets belonging to VoIP applications and block the calls...

U.S. broadband-cable companies are considered information services, which by law gives them the right to block VoIP calls. Comcast Corp., in Philadelphia, the country's largest cable company, is already a Narus customer; Thomas declined to say whether Comcast uses the VoIP-blocking capabilities.

full article: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org.nyud.net:8090/oct05/1846

[mandy]

Another article on this topic:

Broadband providers play the VoIP greed game: and you lose

...increasing instances of broadband service providers enacting, and then enforcing, provisions for their customers not to use those lines to access VoIP services- mainly those that just don't happen to be sold by the same broadband provider.

full article: http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/index.php?p=711

[stardust]

The first article is rather informative.  Doesn't this mean that ebay's purchase of Skype will end up being a total and complete loss?  in the billions?  Who will bother with it if it's going to be the same price to use as your own phone carrier's high price?  There will be no 'free' PC toPC phone calling!

Then, again, maybe ebay knows/knew all this up front, and purchased Skype on the anticipation of being able to collect high  'fees' for using the service.  i.e., They pay the phone carrier 2 cents/minute for the use of the bandwidth, then charge the customer 5 cents/minute.  Very probable, I'd say.........

[amy]

The Wall Street Journal Article

Shaw Communications Inc., a large Canadian cable operator, has been using technology purchased from Ellacoya to manage its broadband network for about one year

During some periods of peak usage, video file-sharing traffic is slowed to provide more bandwidth for subscribers accessing email, Web pages and other uses. "We try to manage those people who are avariciously using up spectrum," he says.

Shaw also uses the network management technology to increase revenue. For example, customers who use Vonage or another Internet phone service can pay an additional $9.95 a month to make sure that their calls get higher priority on the network than some other uses.

[xppman]

I just got Vontage and watched (ok fell asleep) listening to the Anit Trust (merger), hearings with Time Warner wanting to buy / Adelphia. The Bell guys were there and some others real concerned about the whole anti competative part. Like why we get bundled CRAP for the first tear of cable and now they want to BLOCK tech??? hmmmmm

[misteroriginal]

This could really suck for Diger & me.