September 25, 2006
VoIP Crimes Of Another Stripe?
After the arrest of five foreign nationals in Namibia providing VoIP service without a license, as well as goings on in various Asian and African countries in regards to VoIP, you might be wondering if VoIP is under attack there. Marcelo Rodriguez takes a crtical look [Voxilla] at what Russell Shaw [ZD Net] and Rich Tehrani [TMC Net] are saying.
Rodriguez points out that both Shaw and Tehrani mention "Third World" countries as locales where VoIP seems to be under attack, possibly due to affiliations between the government and the traditional telecoms, but that they leave out the US as being in a similar category. (Examples: Korea and the UAE blocking Skype.) He then goes on to reveal several examples of lobbying, campaign contributions, and all-expense golf vacations.
The Voxilla piece is very revealing and extremely politically charged. I'm going to take my cue to up the voltage. Let's take a few separate scenarios. First scenario, conspiracy: the entire telephony system in North America is fully wiretapped and all calls are monitored either by humans or machines, for whatever political purpose the real men with power wield. Second scenario: the first scenario is crock, but phone calls are a valuable commodity and thus extremely lucrative. Third scenario: a combination of both the first and second scenarios.
Choose your scenario. Either way, VoIP threatens the status quo, and hence spawns acts like CALEA, possibly attacks on Vonage's share price, and debates like neutrality vs tiered Internet service. Everything that is happening politically in telephony satisfies one of those three scenarios. Let's face it: VoiP is a threat no matter how you slice your political pie.
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