Interesting Article on ISP's Slowing Competitors VoIP Down

Posts: 10

Having just installed Vonage in my home and getting rid of my SBC, I must say I am at the present time very satisfied with my Vonage service... and that's with having Comcast as my ISP.

I also think this forum is a great service to users of Vonage and I have learned a lot over the past couple of weeks on Vonage in general.

There is an article that I have run across that I would recommend and I am interested to hear from those who know a lot more than me as to what your opinion is... especially when it comes to the future use of a non-ISP's Voip service.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/23/isps_set_skype_limits/

A couple of quotes from the article when talking about Voip, "calls can be detected by their "signature" and when too many people are doing Skype or Vonage or Free World dialup calls, the ISP can set limits."...

and, "One reason ISPs like doing this, is to encourage their customers to use the company's own Voip system, rather than a rival's. If the packet is void, and is detected as from the cable company's own product, it is optimised - sent through faster than normal."

These quotes are from page 2 of 2 of the article.

Hmmmm....

Posts: 18 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Apr 28, 2005 Posts: 18

The FCC has already jump on some telecoms in the midwest for screwing with Voip services and blocking ports.... implementing something like this wouldn't be any different.

If one of the big telecoms does something like this, I would think a rather sizable lawsuit and/or fine would be in their future. Someone like Comcast could only mask this as a network traffic "problem" for so long...

Here in the States, it makes far more sense for the telecoms to try and do their thing via lobby efforts. Otherwise they risk getting the ol' beat down by the FCC.