China May Ban Skype In Misguided Protectionist Effort

from the this-will-backfire dept

Mon, Jan 3rd 2011 4:37am — Mike Masnick

Back in 2008, we wondered how long it would be until the Chinese government looked to crack down on VoIP providers like Skype, as it was becoming clear that a larger and larger number of folks in China were starting to use Skype for international calls (especially to Taiwan). It appears that may be happening, as the Chinese government has made it clear that it believes most VoIP networks are illegal, and it plans to crack down on them. The reason for such a ban is generally as a protectionist move, helping state sponsored telcos -- who return the favor by letting the government spy on calls (something Skype does not allow). Of course, as we've seen in other countries that have implemented Skype bans, including Bangladesh, Belarus, Jordan and Namibia, the end result of these kinds of bans can be supremely counterproductive for the local economy. It's not hard to realize why: cheap phone calls enable all sorts of other businesses to do things cheaper and open up new possibilities, like overseas call centers. Expensive phone calls make business more expensive and difficult. So, in protecting the local state-supported telcos, these efforts tend to do a lot more harm than good.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: china, voip
Companies: skype

13 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 6:07am

I think they understand that supporting their existing internal infrastructure is much more beneficial to the country in the long run than allowing some third party to come in and steal the business away, leaving little or no money in the country.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 6:25am
  
  Re:
  By "supporting their existing internal infrastructure" you mean their state owned telephone company, right?
  Local people trying to start a small company that would benefit from cheap calls and use the saved money for other important investments can sod off!
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 6:51am
    
    Re: Re:
    Perhaps you should learn a little more, China Unicom and China Telecom are both listed in publically traded stock markets.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - The eejit (profile), 3 Jan 2011 @ 7:22am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      The Communist Party also has a controlling stake in them, making them state-owned. See how that works?
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 7:40am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Learn what exactly?
      
      That the state doesn't want to loose control of their communications spying capabilities?
      
      They are threatning Skype but the others Chinese VoIP solutions are not named why?
      
      Did you see they talk about the QQLive that offers the same things Skype does? Although technically it is a P2P program used for video streaming(TV, movies, music), it has also communications capabilities that are monitored by the Chinese government.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
      - Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 7:48am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Want to see how far the Chinese government goes with their monitoring?
        
        Look at the Tecent QQ app.
        
        Nobody threatened that and it do the same thing Skype does.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
      - Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 10:39am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        One of the interesting features of a hybrid communist / capitalist society is that choices can be made that don't please the free market people very much, but have better returns over time for the country as a whole. Rather than just taking the short term "cheapest" model, they look at the overall implications for the market place and end users and go from there.
        
        Yes, there are security issues, and certainly the government benefits from having solid access to the communications networks. I suspect that any "made in china" solution for VoIP will include security provisions to keep it in line with existing services.
        
        At the end of the day, the two chinese telecom companies either employ or provide work for millions of chinese people. It is incredibly unlikely the government would want to trade that out.
        [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- The Groove Tiger (profile), 3 Jan 2011 @ 8:14am
  
  Re:
  Funny how you refer to competition as "stealing".
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Bas Grasmayer (profile), 3 Jan 2011 @ 6:28am

Mmyeah, I don't think it's just protectionism.

It's simply maintaining control over the population, under the guise of protectionism. They've had big trouble monitoring Skype, which is used by activists for this reason.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 7:33am
  
  Re:
  I was thinking the same thing, it is not about telco protectionism is about political protectionism.
  
  They don't want to loose control of the communications infra-structure to an more open solution because it becomes hard for them to control things, they probably would have no problem with homegrown solutions that they can control and spy on it.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - MAC, 3 Jan 2011 @ 2:03pm
    
    Re: Re:
    More specifically, the PLA has controlling stake in them. Yep, thats right; the good ole Peoples Liberation Army...
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 7:00am

Wait for it!! It will be the media event of the century. REVOLUTION IN CHINA
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Anonymous Coward, 3 Jan 2011 @ 8:26am

Spam
Wow, the older story linked to by "supremely counterproductive" is really full of spam comments.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]