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back to article Russian telecom firms weigh in against Skype

Russian businesses have banded together to lobby against VoIP services such as Skype, arguing that the technology poses a threat to national security, as well as their business. The lobby, called the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, is working with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's political party to draft " …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Future of Voice.

    VoIP is the future in networking. Traditional telecommunications will no longer apply. I do wonder how we are going to be able to evolve into a state in which this is acceptable to the bigger businesses.

    With universal internet access, better wireless VoIP handset implementations and a better structure for attaining a permanent phone number, there is no real reason to keep with the expensive telecoms companies.

    Trust Russia to attempt what all others likely wish they could. Who uses Skype these days anyway? Apart from the simple installation procedure for the unbrave, it's expensive.

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  2. david 63

    They forgot...

    ...to play the terrorist card. Gordie and his mob need to give them some lessons...

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  3. MyHeadIsSpinning
    Black Helicopters

    Typical luddite response

    They can't spy on VOIP calls yet, so they are heavily against them.

    Is this news?

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    India

    I found it quite amusing that India was trying to ban it's companies from outsourcing.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh, who is it that really owns MegaFon?

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL1237627920080512 - Telecoms Minister Leonid Reiman. And do we believe that Reiman never kicked anything upstairs?

    AC for obvious reasons.

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  6. FreeTard

    Been with blueface myself for a few years

    ...and never looked back. You can even keep your old telephone number, but I didn't bother since the wife decided to hand over our info to phone spammers.

    The quality is exactly as good as with POTS sytle systems, even better with higher codecs and better handsets. I even have it working on my mobile for "free" calls on the move with a data package. Much to the chagrin of my mobile provider (o2).

    POTS and ISDN are dead and gone, good riddance I say.

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  7. Jean-Luc
    Megaphone

    just like Canada's CRTC

    But the difference is that the CRTC is taxpayer-funded, so we get doubly screwed for its "services rendered".

    Their important innovations:

    - disallowing Skype iPhone app. Not sure about the rational here.,

    - disallowing Skype In, supposedly due to 911 concerns. How about I decide what I need?

    - more generally, saddling us with some of the highest cell phone voice, and especially data, costs in developed nations

    - blessing a GSM monopoly when the GSM big fish (Rogers) swallowed the lone other GSM provider (Fido).

    Yup, often no regulation at all is better than deeply flawed regulation. But that wouldn't pay those bureaucrats' salaries, would it?

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Reiman...

    ... is not a "Telecoms Minister". More than year ago he took a position of President's Adviser - see http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/subj/201297.shtml

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Just a couple of small points

    If as said at the top of the list by AC, the future of telecommunications is VoIP, who is going to install all the wires and maintain them? Without the wires (cable excepted) you ain't got no internet kid!

    Lots of customer 'service' centres already use VoIP for most of their communications. I too have a couple of VoIP lines for various purposes, but I retain a land line and its number because I couldn't have the others without it!

    An argument could be made for using mobile internet -- I use the Mobile Business one from Orange, which is very good, but it is not as fast as my connection to Be (up to 24meg), where I get around 10 meg. I also run a VoiP line in my MacBookPro when on the move and I agree that it is very useful indeed. I also have a mobile phone with two lines (I think you can only get two lines from Orange, the others don't do that) --- it would be an iPhone but only O2 can retail those and I prefer Orange ---- hmmmm ---- there is a rumour ..... we need to wait and see!

    As for the security, VoIP breaks messages into small packets which travel any which way to their destination where they are reassembled. That makes it very hard for big brother to listen in. But, what's to stop you scrambling your normal phone calls? I mean between places where you want to talk in private and its none of big brother's business. It's illegal to scramble a private phone line in the UK (as far as I understand), but in this day and age, we merely need to scramble the 'message' before it enters the phone line --- then it looks like data --- and (don't quote me) I think THAT might be legal, because we have not attached a 'scrambler' to the phone line. I suppose it depends on how paranoid you are --- maybe you shut the windows before answering the phone ! hahahahaha

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  10. dracotrapnet
    Pirate

    Fun..

    Perhaps they should outlaw VOIP companies from other nations, music from other nations, bread, butter, fish, automobiles, just embargo the world! *evil maniacal laugh* Sharks with lasers *pinky pose*

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