Israel Is The Latest To Block VoIP Calls

from the backwards-thinking dept

Tue, Nov 29th 2005 11:00am — Mike Masnick

Add Israel to the list of countries that is trying to ban VoIP because it causes problems for local telephone companies. You would think that the large high-tech community in Israel would scream pretty loudly about how much this harms them. In fact, other countries have been realizing that their misguided attempts at protecting incumbent telcos by blocking VoIP, often ends up harming many other businesses. This isn't rocket science. Protectionist policies have consequences well beyond the industries they're trying to protect -- and they're mostly negative. In the meantime, it won't take long before most people figure out ways to route around the blockades. Whenever people try to block out voice, they seem to forget that voice is just data, and as such there will be ways to disguise it as other kinds of data.

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Tony K, 29 Nov 2005 @ 12:20pm

VoiP
...should we still be riding in horse-drawn buggies, too? It's called progress. Quit trying to stop it. Either find a way to compete or step aside.
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Fox J. Mulder, 30 Nov 2005 @ 6:21am

Not completely accurate
Turns out government is not against private VOIP used by individuals(such as Skype), but rather against small vendors who run a VOIP service and compete with the long-distance phone companies (which are licensed in Israel).
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