VOIP ban hits China

Jinan Yinquan Technology, a wholly-owned subsidiary of China VOIP and Digital Telecom, has been temporarily blocked of voice-over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services after the riots in north western China, reports ChinaTechNews.

Li Kunwu, CEO of the company, says: "The block of VOIP services is a political need at this time. It only affects customers in Shandong Province. Our large enterprise clients outside of Shandong area can continue to use the services without interruption.”

Over the past two years, other VOIP providers, such as Skype, have also experienced outages and blocks on their services in China.

Research company TeleGeography reveals that European VOIP subscribers have grown from just over six million in 2005 to 34.6 million at year-end 2008, states TeleGeography.

The company says VOIP accounts for more than 24% of fixed-line telephone subscribers in Europe while VOIP service revenues of EUR4.1 billion (R45.6 billion) are dwarfed by the nearly EUR36 billion (R400 billion) generated by traditional switched fixed-line services.

TeleGeography analyst Paul Brodsky says: “Fixed-line telephony was the cash cow that allowed incumbents to invest in mobile telephony, broadband, and video services. However, in Europe today, voice is increasingly just a loss leader, used to sell broadband and video services.”

Voxofon has released its latest mobile VOIP application for the Palm WebOS platform, says TMCnet.

Company officials claim that this application will widen the reach and diversity of its low cost international calling services.

Alexey Goloshubin, Voxofon CEO, notes: “VOIP technology offers great savings for international calling, but until recently it hasn't been readily available on mobile phones, whose users have traditionally paid a premium for long distance service.”