China Trying to Block Skype
In what is sure to be shocking news to everyone, certain companies are unhappy when someone else offers the same service for 98% less:
Skype service, which allows people to make calls from their PCs to regular phones, enables subscribers in China to dial to major Western markets in the United States and Europe for as little as 2 eurocents per minute (2.5 U.S. cents), compared with rates closer to $1 per minute from China Telecom.
China routinely blocks access to Web sites on politically sensitive subjects such as the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement and the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen Square that left hundreds dead. But blockage of sites for purely economic reasons is much less common.
We here at BBB often poke fun at our own domestic telecom competitors but in most of the world there is only one telecom firm per country (most often a quasi-governmental entity). We can understand how China Telecom would be a bit unhappy with Skype but unfortunately, like the internet, the genie is out of the bottle. You can try to block a site here or there but technologically it is impossible to completely stop something. Skype isn’t the only VOIP company around…
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