A Moroccan telecoms operator has blocked voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) services Viber, TeamSpeak and possibly even Skype.
This is according to customers of Maroc Telecom, which Morocco's telecommunications regulator, ANRT, says is the country's leading Internet service provider, with a 56% market share. Maroc is one of three operators in the country.
Viber is a VOIP service available as an iPhone or Google Android mobile application, while TeamSpeak is a free teleconferencing call service that allows pairs and even groups of people to speak to each other over the Internet.
Blogs such as “The Next Web” (TNW) and Moroccan newspaper Al Sabaheya said in the last two weeks that Maroc has also banned Skype. TNW said the alleged block comes as the operator wants customers to use its own VOIP product called MTBOX.
Maroc Telecom Group, however, did not respond to ITWeb's questions about whether the company has in fact officially blocked VOIP services, such as Skype.
But Hisham Almiraat, a Moroccan doctor living in France, says Maroc blocked Skype on its ADSL service, but not on its 3G network. He adds that the move follows persistent poor quality of Skype over the last few months in that country.
Another Maroc Telecom customer, Youcef Es-Skouri, says Skype is still working on his ADSL connection in Morocco, albeit intermittently, while voice over Internet providers Viber and TeamSpeak have had their Web sites and services blocked. The 19-year-old Moroccan, who is a computer science student, says his attempt to make a call on Viber or TeamSpeak using a Maroc connection results in calls not going through.
Es-Skouri also showed ITWeb an e-mail he sent to Viber two days ago in which he asked the VOIP provider why its service had gone down in Morocco. In the e-mail, Viber's support centre responded: “We have received various similar complaints from Viber users in your area of the world, and we have investigated this issue.
“It seems that the outgoing access to Viber and VOIP applications may have been blocked by your specific service provider,” the support centre representative added.
It is unclear when the alleged blocks happened exactly, but Es-Skouri says Skype has been experiencing poor service since June last year, while Viber stopped working in November 2011. Only the United Arab Emirates and Central American nation Belize currently block Viber, according the VOIP provider. Now, Maroc Telecom could be added to that list.
Es-Skouri, speaking about Maroc Telecom, says: “They don't like VOIP services at all, they didn't communicate about that and they're still lying and telling that everything is working. They're afraid of money that they lose when we use VOIP for free,” he added.
Maroc Telecom Group is 53% owned by French multinational media conglomerate Vivendi Group, while the Moroccan government owns the remaining stake. Maroc also owns shares in operators on the African continent such as Mauritania's Mauritel, Burkina Faso's Onatel, Gabon Telecom and Mali's Sotelma, according to the Vivendi Group.
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