Should BTL be allowed to block VOIP?

switch...

here. All stations streaming normally.

I think wave and krem was planning on broadcasting it live.

Just coincidence I guess.

Wed. 26, 2006 9am Radisson Carocol Room.

See you there!

We must excerise our right to communicate without interference.

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."

to the BTL.net domain address. BTL can block those so they never get them.

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."

consumeraffairs@puc.bz Yes, send those emails!!

Belize. Nature's best kept secret - the secret is out...

What is PUC's email address, so we can send letters? I am not into posting traditional mail, I haven't done that in decades.

I am told that the more people go, the better, and for people to write and send in letters to the PUC, too. Some of us have sent in letters already but we need more. ACB will be allowed to make a presentation at the forum, will all this help us?? Don't know, but it's election time soon sooo....it's worth a try.

how many people going to this ting?

"There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes."

Last year, the FCC penalised an ISP that was blocking VoIP. The ISP was Madison River Communications from NC.

Clueless about VOIP, Madison River describes themselves as: "a rapidly growing national communications CLEC provider offering innovative data, voice and colocation services to large and small corporations and value-added resellers across the United States." Innovative, eh? I think some of their VOIP savvy subscribers would use slightly different, yet unprintable, adjectives to describe their services. It reminds me of how BTL describe themselves also.

Here is what the FCC had to say about the issue:

The Enforcement Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission reached a $15,000 consent decree today with Madison River Communication, LLC that will ensure uninterrupted Internet voice service on the company’s network.

“We saw a problem, and we acted swiftly to ensure that Internet voice service remains a viable option for consumers,” said FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell.

According to the terms of the consent decree, Madison River commits that it will refrain from blocking VOIP traffic and ensure that such blocking will not recur. The company will pay a contribution of $15,000 to the United States Treasury to settle this matter.

“The industry must adhere to certain consumer protection norms if the Internet is to remain an open platform for innovation” said Powell.

Powell has laid out his vision of “Internet Freedom”, a series of principles by which any company that intentionally breaks a consumer’s connection to the Internet violates the openness that consumers have come to expect.

“In my view, the surest way to preserve ‘Net Freedom’ is to handle these issues in an enforcement context where hypothetical worriers give way to concrete facts and—as we have shown today—real solutions,” said Powell.

Lets hope the PUC has the necessary organs to deny BTL's request and tell them to start doing some REAL INNOVATION.

Crappy and Expensive. I agree with Yellow. It is not worth the money we pay for the internet service. I buy their service because there is no other competition that offers me internet. With competetion, would come innovation and better service. I would gladly have 3 DSl lines (different locations) but, with the current prices,I rather only pay for 1 line. Their business startegy is based on getting the most out of the people with the least effort possible. If DSL was cheaper, I would be giving them 50% more (for other lines in other locations, setting up a VPN across the country, for instance) of what I currently pay, but with the current prices, I rather keep that money in my pocket.

What Belize needs is a totally new independent ISP. meaning they will not get their internet from ISP or use BTL as their backbone.

"A dog never bites the hand that feeds it (GOB being the DOG)."

BTL's interent charges are ridiculos. and the service are crappy for the high price you pay.

BTL claim to have the best telecom network in Central America, but yet some central american countries have better service, especially when it come to interent.

"A dog never bites the hand that feeds it (GOB being the DOG)."

Trouble on the line

VoIP customers around the world are discovering that their calls cannot be connected because telecom companies are blocking the movement of such traffic across the net. Jane Dudman finds out why

Theodore Peckler lives in Monrovia, California, and is one of the 1.5 million people in the US who uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) systems to make cheap phone calls via his cable modem connection. But last year, after five months using the VoIP service from the US provider Vonage without problems, he noticed an abrupt deterioration. "The line was choppy, very choppy and you could not understand any words spoken," he recalls. Puzzled, Peckler ran pingplotter - a program to detect problems such as packet loss and latency (delays in sending over the separate "packets" of internet traffic). It revealed major latency between his cable modem and local internet service provider (ISP).

"I contacted the ISP and was told it did not support third party VoIP," explains Peckler. "Vonage ran a test. It seems the ISP was blocking the cable modem when the Vonage adapter went into use. I ran a test of my own. I ran pingplotter for 10 minutes: no blockage, then I picked up my Vonage phone and placed a call: immediately there was a 100% blockage on the cable modem. This was a continuous loss as long as the phone was used."

Peckler is not alone. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, including Qatar and Mexico, have been noting similar problems since last year. For while VoIP (often pronounced "voype") might seem like a great deal for the average person, entrenched interests in the telecoms industry see it differently - and are taking action against it.

Consultation

Mindful of what has happened in other countries, the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom took the unusual step in February of announcing that it will look at the growing VoIP market, and report next month on whether new laws are needed to protect it. The consultation document says: "VoIP service providers have expressed concern that their ability to provide a reliable service may be impacted by internet access providers (ISPs) selectively degrading or blocking their VoIP traffic."

Ofcom says it has no evidence this is happening in the UK; only about 500,000 customers use it. But the forecast is for that to rise by 3m in the next six months.

And VoIP blocking happens in other countries, often those where there is still only a single telecoms company. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, national carrier Saudi Telecom is using software from US supplier Narus to block all VoIP calls.

Telcos in the US and other countries are reluctant to have their bandwidth encroached on by traffic from which they earn no revenue, and have been challenged over similar alleged incidents of VoIP blocking. Blocking VoIP traffic is technically difficult, but not illegal, and blocking specific types of internet traffic is on the increase.

Luxembourg-based VoIP provider Skype, now owned by eBay, has been particularly controversial. Skype is used by 75m people. But not everyone wants Skype on their network.

Skype is considered by many to pose a potential security threat because it opens an encrypted tunnel out of the network and forms supernodes that sit on a network and set up VoIP calls. There is considerable debate about how much bandwidth such supernodes eat up. US blogger Paul Kedrosky (http://tinyurl.com/mjelx) noted a major impact on his main office PC, and links to warnings that in supernode mode, Skype may even saturate a 100 Mbps line.

"Skype calls can be very scary for the owners of the networks over which they run," says Steve Bannerman, vice president of marketing at Narus.

Bandwidth

Skype says its software does not put undue pressure on bandwidth. "Users who have become 'supernodes' will not be able to notice any performance decreases on their computers," says Kurt Sauer, head of Skype's security operations. "A supernode will use approximately a tenth of the bandwidth of a user listening to radio on the internet. There are companies blocking or attempting to block Skype, but we believe they are making a mistake."

There's a lot of divided feeling about Skype, says Louise Cooke, managing director of Blue Coat Systems, whose ProxySG software can block Skype. "Some IT managers detest it," she says. "They don't want their network becoming a super-hub for Skype. But others see it as something that may have business benefits. We use it all the time."

VoIP blocking is often a function added to network or security management software, such as Narus's IP Platform, Verso Technologies' NetSpective 2.0 and SonicWall's enterprise appliances. Other providers with software capable of blocking VoIP include Bitek International, Packeteer, iPoque and Blue Coat Systems, and the list is growing.

One UK organisation that has blocked Skype is Brunel University. "We had a number of concerns about uncontrolled traffic," says Simon Furber, Brunel's network manager. "Skype is unpredictable because of its uncanny ability to become a supernode, so ... we shut the front door."

This is still Brunel's official policy. "But this is a balancing act: a lot of people use Skype and asked us why we were blocking it," explains Furber. "And Skype just finds another way out of the network."

So Brunel has now partitioned off its Skype traffic, using Packeteer's Packetshaper software. "We have corralled it so we can keep an eye on it and see what impact it is having," says Furber.

How blocking works

Blocking specific types of traffic over an IP network is usually done by blocking "ports" - equivalent to boarding up doors (if you imagine a network as a house with 65,536 doors) or denying access to specific IP addresses (equivalent to turning away particular people).

But Skype traffic is hard to identify, because Skype uses proprietary protocols, is encrypted and spreads from peer to peer, using a random combination of IP addresses and ports that defeats traditional port-blocking filters.

That means it can be blocked only by investigating the headers of every internet packet crossing the network to find the "Skype" ones. The challenge is to do this quickly enough so that other services aren't degraded. Narus claims its software can do this, and a major European customer confirms this.

A proxy appliance, widely used to apply controls to web traffic, can also be used to block specified unwanted traffic, including voice calls, if necessary.
"Bad is never good until worse happens"

because we are not getting full internet access anymore. They shouldn't be allowed to block what they want. Makes you wonder what they will try to block next.

Who seek knowledge deh wisdom increase.

the Chamber, BTIA, BBB should all come together and join forces.

"A dog never bites the hand that feeds it (GOB being the DOG)."

The Business Community (including the Tourism Industry) should be more involved in this debate. I don't know if they are involved at the moment, but if they do participate, it would definetly be a plus. The main issue would be to prove that BTL is not incurring in any loss due to VoIP nor will it do so in the future. Also, that their proposal of blocking VoIP is a blatant display of lack of creativity and imagination by a company that labels itself as innovative. This is their opportunity to innovate, and they are failing terribly.

they will add their investment of purchasing Intelco, etc.

One thing for sure, if musa/ralph through PUC allows BTL to continue to block VoIP, it will be the end of the PUP.

the Businesses will not stand for it.

FYI: Did you know that is cost BTL 2 cents for a VoIP call to the US and they charge us 99 cents using 10-10-199?

"A dog never bites the hand that feeds it (GOB being the DOG)."

I think BTL's arguments will be based entirely on the business side of things. They will present numbers and statistics, showing how VoIP has supposedly stymied their profits. Of course, we also know their tried and tired of argument of sustaining 'non-profitable' telephone lines in remote areas. BTL might also project how VoIP will lead to their 'ruin'. All of this will be done using numbers and statistics. If the pro-VoIP committee can get a hold of these numbers, they will be in a better position to counter their arguments. Furthermore, I also believe that BTL's representatives will be mainly business persons who are less technically inclined. The pro-VoIP people, on the other hand, will be mostly technically inclined persons. Thus, it is necessary to try to anticipate their arguments in order not to be caught off guard with their 'statistical' jargon.

Pro-VoIP can also do some research of other countries who have adapted to VoIP and countries similar to ours. Case studies can also be shown of similar companies who had to 'innovate' in order to stay relevant to the 21st century.

Just my 2 cents.

it would be interesting to see what BTL will come up with for their cause as to keeping it blocked.

"A dog never bites the hand that feeds it (GOB being the DOG)."

just LEAVE IT ALONE!

CORN: THE GREAT

BTL's arguement would be? let me give it a try, We need to money so our shareholders to make a profit. no matter what, it will boils right down to money because i see no other legit reason for it to be blocked on BTL's behave.

"A dog never bites the hand that feeds it (GOB being the DOG)."

who so damn fool and vote yes??? must fucking work for BTL huh?

hahahaha, michael??? you got a koncas account too.....
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VoIP is the future. In fact, it is the present, as has been pointed out, telecom companies in other parts of the world have had to change their business strategy to adapt to VoIP. BTL has to do the same. They are behaving like some tyranicall maniacs. They should remember that they are where they are because of us the customers.