<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Should the Algerian government go through with this, it would effectively put an end to the monopoly of Algérie Telecom and the GSM operators, as they would face legal competition on international charges that are currently six times higher than those offered using VOIP.
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But would it help?
In the South African context I think not.
I envision that Telkom would slash international charges and escalate local call charges to compensate. Increase the cost of data lines to ISP's and use port shaping to degrade the VOIP service. All of which would be challenged and Telkom will tie it up in court for the next 5 years.
If you are using VOIP to contact overseas relatives, continue to do it until Telkom ask you to desist, which is very unlikely. I think we have more pressing needs than legal VOIP in the South Africa Internet Community.
The bottom line is that making VOIP legal is more likely to increase the cost of Internet access than anything else until our regulator is given more clout.
Cheers
Chris
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
But would it help?
In the South African context I think not.
I envision that Telkom would slash international charges and escalate local call charges to compensate. Increase the cost of data lines to ISP's and use port shaping to degrade the VOIP service. All of which would be challenged and Telkom will tie it up in court for the next 5 years.
If you are using VOIP to contact overseas relatives, continue to do it until Telkom ask you to desist, which is very unlikely. I think we have more pressing needs than legal VOIP in the South Africa Internet Community.
The bottom line is that making VOIP legal is more likely to increase the cost of Internet access than anything else until our regulator is given more clout.
Cheers
Chris