[Chapter-delegates] Proposed law to ban Skype in Russia?

[Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond]

"Fred Baker" <fred at cisco.com> writes:

> It's not a new behavior; a number of monopoly telecoms have had their 
> respective governments outlaw internet-based competition. It's easier 
> than having a competitive product.
>
> On Aug 15, 2009, at 2:03 AM, Marcin Cieslak wrote:
>
>> Fred Baker wrote:
>>> Per Google Translation:
>>>
>>> So - some operators are worried about their monopoly stranglehold,  and
>>> users are worried.
>>>

Indeed.

Whever such a discussion happens, and I have seen so many re-occurences of 
such, and at decreased intervals, I remember two "war stories".

The first one's in the mid 1990s. I was tracking Internet connectivity and 
Africa was at a point when some countries were considering getting connected 
to this network of networks, but guess what, it wasn't the Telecom 
Corporations (TelCos) thinking of getting connected; rather, it was private 
individuals and local companies which had to go to great lengths to obtain 
some kind of connectivity to the rest of the world, often with nothing but 
trouble from the local TelCo itself. Operators were, as usual, holding on to 
their monopoly stranglehold and the Internet initially happened without 
them.
Come to this of  it, other countries, such as Russia, had gone through the 
same sort of thing years earlier. kremvax.demos.su (and I am not speaking 
about the kremvax.uucp joke) was linked to the outside world through a 
microwave link into Finland, as far as I remember.

So it's always the same legacy monopoly operators who complain and wish to 
retain full control. They repeatedly show *no vision* and that's obviously 
why they are unable to run a business that will compete.

The second anecdote comes from London in 2008, when a well respected 
Internet personality told a major UK bank in public, but under Chatham House 
Rules (hence the reason why I won't say who or where), that their Network 
Neutrality report was crap, because it looked at each TelCo opportunity as a 
single opportunity for investment, whilst instead it should both look at 
that TelCo's ability to innovate and at the benefits brought forth to the 
economy by the ability to innovate further thanks to a Neutral Internet 
supporting the End to End principle.

All of this to say that I can understand corporations blocking access to 
Skype if they so wish. After all, a company provides its employees with 
other means of telecommunication which do not require Skype access. But for 
a *country* to block Skype altogether, for the sole purpose of defending its 
own monopolistic TelCo, that country's policymakers show no understanding 
whatsoever of the digital economy and the future global reliance on that 
digital economy, a reliance which will not only facilitate dialogue and 
telecommunications, e-meetings and the like, but also build a synergy which 
will lift up their economy.

You'll understand me better if you've been in many conference calls. A pure 
voice conference call is much less useful than one with integrated text, and 
that's less useful than also having means of presenting data to other 
correspondents. Skype's simplicity is its beauty. It is not perfect, but it 
somehow does the job - and I've often had better voice connectivity with 
developing countries through skype than using POTS (Plain Old Telephone 
Service). The amount of work that can take place thanks to facilitated 
telecommunications leads to increased wealth creation for the country, which 
is likely to vastly outlast the local TelCo's losses. Paradigm shift, I 
know.

So country X wishes to ban Skype. Will you ban Marratech? How about Webex? 
How about every other IP telephony/conference software that's out there? How 
about we ban Internet altogether, and revert to our old, duty monopolies? 
Just remember one rule: once something is invented, it cannot be 
de-invented. It goes against the laws of nature.

Warmest regards,

Olivier