Zennstrom decides to disrupt another fat, usurious, oligopolic industry: wireless broadband. “FreedomPop is aimed at making access to the Internet over wireless free.” “The Internet is a right, not a privilege.“
Free calls from Google Talk in the US and Canada through 2012.
Skype for Android 2.6 release added new features.
Skype for iPad 3.6 and Skype for iPhone 3.6 fixed a few bugs, improved stability, minor UI improvements and fixed a problem with chat deletion.
Skype updates its Firefox and Chrome browser toolbars on Windows, speeding Click-to-Call markup and improving compatibility. Which release of IE will come with a Skype plug-in preinstalled? When will Skype offer a click-to-call service for content management systems? And when will Skype add people-search to browsers? With all the browser publishers working to build in realtime IM/voice/video/ communication protocols in 2012 releases, a widely adopted browser plug-in is an important point of future customer contact.
 Skype’s man in Washington, Chris Libertelli, now leads the Netflix government affairs team. While at Skype his deft touch with the FCC helped Skype assure access in US markets and partner with wireless operators. He also led Skype’s government affairs operations for the US states, Canada and Latin America. Paul Bond says usage-based-billing is the hot issue. With Chris on hand, I expect net neutrality to continue to be on Netflix’ agenda but take a backseat to battling for Netflix and its customers’ right to stream. Skype hasn’t announced who will fill Chris’ shoes.
A November 18 Survey: Mobile operators predict they’ll lose SMS traffic to Skype and other messaging apps. Mavenir’s survey says they’ll respond with IMS services. Good luck with that: BGR reports there are almost a million apps for the major mobile platforms.
A Forbes reporter rehashes an October New York Post security story about a few NYU-Polytechnic researchers who use Skype’s peer-to-peer network to see user IP address. Then they layer on hype that this is a security flaw. This is odd: having two computers see each other’s IP addresses is how the Internet works, unless you want your data run through an intermediary. Intermediaries pretty much defeat the point of a p2p network. Here’s the research citation: S. LeBlond, C. Zhang, A. Legout, K.W. Ross, W. Dabbous, I Know Where You are and What You are Sharing:Exploiting P2P Communications to Invade Users’ Privacy (pdf), Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2011, Berlin, 2011.
 Phil Wolff builds realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
Microsoft finished buying Skype. Ballmer’s PR, Bates’ PR. Courtney, York, Slashdot opine. Most folks thought this happened last April. I thought the EU should have attached strings to the deal, but they didn’t.
Gotta wonder if Microsoft would still have bought Skype if they had to pay US taxes on the deal.
A Mint.com infographic using Forbes data: AT&T got $1.05 Billion in tax rebates on FY2010 $18.2 Billion sales. So the US government paid AT&T more than Skype sold all year.
Skype filed DMCA take down notices against an engineer who reverse engineered part of Skype’s earlier communication protocols, alleging a blog infringed copyright on Skype source code.
 Skype started updating the Libyan flag emoticon (flag:ly) from the old solid green one of Muammar Gadhafi to the new flag chosen by Libya’s revolutionaries. Facebook petition to make the change. If you don’t see a “horizontal tricolour of red, black and green with a white crescent and star centered on the black stripe” in your IM now, you should see it in one of the next few downloads. Already updated on the Skype.com web site. Skype rates 30.2¢/minute to landlines plus connection fee.
How do investors follow an $8.5 Billion exit? Former Skype owner Andreessen Horowitz is raising $900 million to buy more skypes.
A security hack could reveal your Skype profile and IP address and what bittorrent files you’re downloading. Read the paper from researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, NYU-Poly, and the French research institute INRIA. Your browser gives up your IP address every time you visit a web page so this is most interesting to people avoiding surveillance and actively protecting their privacy. Tip: use a different VPN for Skype and each app you use to avoid the cross-referencing that might lead to blackmail.
The October snowstorms that hit the US Northeast put Skype to work as an alternative when telephony and roads were offline for a few days. A friend in Hartford, Connecticut, wrote “I’m sorta acting as a base for all my relatives and coworkers after this snowstorm. relaying calls and messages and such between people with no power and such. my t-mobile phone has no service. my verizon phone has intermittent failures and dropped calls. skype works beautifully, however if I’m dealing with peoples’ cell phones, they’re the weak end of the call.”
 Jim Courtney: “If Skype wants to have a viable developer program we need to see results soon that can bring revenue to the developers.”
Skype renamed the Public API to Desktop API. More accurate.
Several APIs were rebranded as “SkypeKit for Desktop”, still in a restricted public beta.
SkypeKit for Desktop now supports two-party video calls.
A new beta of Trillian for Windows is using SkypeKit. It won’t allow cross-network IM or calling but it will let you turn off your Skype-branded client.
Dan York: “Meanwhile… is this renaming setting the stage for the release of some new client-less APIs? Let’s hope so… ” Dan worries the new realtime communication features (WebRTC/RTCWEB) being built into nextgen browsers will be hidebound to PSTN telephony instead of new over-the-top networks.
Microsoft announced their commercial-use Kinect for Windows SDK will be available early in 2012. Think we’ll see an official Skype for Kinect edition?
Korea’s Pantech will bring Kinnect-style gestural commands to Android mobile phones. A year from now I expect we’ll see this on core Windows, iOS, and Android mobile OSs.
Data Without Borders launched, a data science NGO bringing statisticians to small private sector big data sets. Personal data was the focus of the October Internet Identity Workshop.
VoIP pioneer Alec Saunders joined RIM, leading its Blackberry developer program. See sessions from this month’s BBcon devcon.
Skype is quietly retiring old thin-client services for UK mobile operator 3. Courtney says “I would imagine 3 would have to be working on a strategy to phase out its initial Skype service and transition their customers to newer platforms.” Still available in the UK, Ireland, and Australia for now, it has been discontinued in Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, and Sweden. Andy Abramson: “like so many sideline projects that ‘proved things’ now Skype is back to being just a IM based calling service online with a few hooks to the PSTN.” 4G and smarter phones are relegating Skype thin-client services to developing markets.
Download Skype for Windows 5.6. This update fixes a few bugs, unbundles Google apps (Google is retiring its Desktop which bundled Skype), and gives credit for third-party components. Or get 5.5 (5.5.0.119) which corrects some issues with the Skype home page popping up when in compact mode, fixes memory leaks in Skype Click-to-Call.
30.5 million people signed in to Skype at the same time on Monday, 10 October 2011, a new high-water-mark for Skype dialtone since the end of March. A seasonal thing, fueled by more than a million people downloading Skype desktop apps in the days before. I’m guessing about 180 million active users this week.
Just for comparison, Rafe Needleman reports “Zynga revealed that there are 232 million active monthly users of the network, and 60 million daily users. The company records 2 billion play minutes each day.”
 RIP Steve Jobs. All sorts of milestones in my career were directly influenced by Steve. My first job out of college: selling Apple IIs. First well paying job after being down and out: Mac desktop publishing for an artist. First dive into design as a discipline: studying about the anthropology research that lead to the Mac. First usability research: books on the difference between the mac/windows/command line.
I had a poster of the NeXT in my bedroom for years, after I saw Jobs demo one at the Berkeley Mac User Group in the old round Physics lecture hall. the idea that you could engineer hardware to support a Unix operating system AND make it even friendlier for newbies than a Mac was gobsmacking. The whole stand-on-a-stage thing and carefully tell your story was part of my toolkit long before he showed his mastery of that, but Steve added a real appreciation of the subject matter, joy for the value he showed, excitement for the geekery.
The iPhone wasn’t my first mobile phone, or even the first I loved (I miss my N90 sometimes). It was the first that made me use it like a computer, made me want to build apps again, dream the entrepreneurial dream. and keep the internet in my pocket. Damn. Damn. I’m typing this on a MacBook in a pizza joint down the street from the Apple store. And they’re playing sonorous sad music.
Europe approves Microsoft buying Skype without strings, follows the US. Microsoft says it is happy. Russia, Ukraine, Serbia and Taiwan are weighing in but are unlikely to have a say on the deal. Jim Courtney marks the progress.
Michigan State professors want a law to permit distance weddings. Their proposal. Adam Candeub and Mae Kuykendall support e-marriage and e-ritual in all 50 US states. “States should authorize marriages of those not present within their territorial boundaries. We demonstrate that states have the sovereign power to authorize marriage performed anywhere, and historically have blessed marriages in distant locations.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer takes Skype video call-ins for its live football TV show. Skype clevelanddotcom.
Tango for Windows is out and, from Forbes, Tango To Be Windows Phone/Mango’s First Videocalling Service, Leapfrogging Skype. imho, first doesn’t matter as much as best fit and most used.
IP lobbyists try to hobble the new Hollywood.
Llama stories Skyped.
Skype WiFi coverage of Manhattan may improve thanks to Boingo’s deal with Towerstream.
Florida soldier sees baby daughter before dying in Afghanistan.
Pennsylvania synagogue offers skyped Hebrew school to bar/bat mitzvah students.
I wish I’d seen Janet Vartinen’s talk “Collaboration: Is the Employee in the Driver’s Seat?” at the 7th Annual Real-Time Communications Conference & Expo. “As social and personal collaboration tools are finding their way into the business environment IT departments are being challenged. … It is not just about engineering anymore. This session will discuss successful methods to bridge the collaboration gap…”
 Phil Wolff consults with Hookflash, a software company building realtime communication products for effective people. Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype.
Can engineers understand what you say in an encrypted Skype call? Four researchers from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill think so. Andrew White, Austin Matthews, Kevin Snow, and Fabian Monrose presented their paper, Phonotactic Reconstruction of Encrypted VoIP Conversations: Hookt on fon-iks (PDF), yesterday to the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy here in Oakland, California. They show you can find patterns in your encrypted VoIP traffic, match those patterns to sounds of speech, and produce a text transcript of your call. Their “VoIP Conversation Reconstruction Process” looks like this:
Here’s the abstract:
In this work, we unveil new privacy threats against Voice-over-IP (VoIP) communications. Although prior work has shown that the interaction of variable bit-rate codecs and length-preserving stream ciphers leaks information, we show that the threat is more serious than previously thought. In particular, we derive approximate transcripts of encrypted VoIP conversations by segmenting an observed packet stream into subsequences representing individual phonemes and classifying those subsequences by the phonemes they encode. Drawing on insights from the computational linguistics and speech recognition communities, we apply novel techniques for unmasking parts of the conversation. We believe our ability to do so underscores the importance of designing secure (yet efficient) ways to protect the confidentiality of VoIP conversations.
This follows their Johns Hopkins University research project where they wrote
“when the audio is encoded using variable bit rate codecs, the lengths of encrypted VoIP packets can be used to identify the phrases spoken within a call. Our results indicate that a passive observer can identify phrases from a standard speech corpus within encrypted calls with an average accuracy of 50%, and with accuracy greater than 90% for some phrases.”
They suggest preventing this kind of analysis will cut audio fidelity and use more bits.
Don’t panic. Yet. Their work proves the point but the four haven’t created a technology ready for the marketplace. Their research tools only support a few American English dialects, assume favorable conditions for collecting VoIP streams (like finding all your packets on your local area network), and assume the stream uses variable speed encoding. These, along with design for large scale text extraction, are just engineering barriers for the willing, to be overcome with money and talent.
They’ve proven it can be done. So I expect two things to happen. Money and talent will apply this work to private and public sector surveillance. Meanwhile, VoIP services will start making text extraction more difficult.
 Skype’s security chief, Adrian Asher, blogged about today’s Skype for Mac update on Skype’s Security blog. He explains that Skype’s approach to delaying the release of a new exploit’s details until after a patch is widely distributed minimizes the risk of the exploit being abused. Adrian’s post follows nicely after Dan’s critique of Skype security communications and my suggestion that it may be time for a security PR profession.
Every company deals with the public face of security problems. Dan York observes Skype’s awkward communication about the discovery, reporting, patching, and disclosing of a vulnerability. They are not alone; this breakdown in the safety conversation happens every day.
So is Security PR becoming a specialized discipline? I could imagine security communications specialists…
- Know security’s jargon and issues.
- Set up social media surveillance for indicators of discussion.
- Design and operate a rapid media response program.
- Work with the others to coordinate how, what and when to communicate on security and safety issues.
- Internal stakeholders, like security, operations, finance, product management.
- External partners, where information, risks and responses are shared.
- The other enterprise communication teams.
- Cultivate security thought leaders and media on security concerns unique to or identified with their brand and products.
- Support the other media teams conversations with the usual media, government, and community relations capabilities.
Large institutions must be facing small incidents daily and large ones more often. I could easily see at least a certification emerging, if not a full-blown occupation and professional society. Default response: a Google group.
Beecher Tuttle speculated Skype bought the assets of group text startup 3Jam. Skype’s texting features are… uninspiring? Hiring 3Jam’s Enlai Chu might fix that. Or is it feature creep?
CallByText compromises Skype security, requiring your Skype name and password, setting you up for identity theft. (Thanks, Hudson)
Reuters reports Google and Facebook talked about buying Skype. They didn’t talk to each other, although that would be interesting. Like this is something new? Skype’s corporate affairs folks must talk to potential buyers, if only to understand a non-IPO deal space.
Transit Telecom screws Brazilian Skype users, cancelling Números Online Skype, using the service since January 2006.
Sony firmware update adds Skype to Bravia TVs.
3CX adds Skype Connect to its Windows PBX software.
Azerbaijan minister wants to ban Skype as a security risk. via Tamada Tales.
Ubergizmo unboxes the Logitech TV Cam for Skype. “At CES 2011, Skype on TV was a huge hit, particularly among seniors. I’ve never seen so many seemingly retired people at CES, and they were almost all excited by this.”
Mumbai police analyze Skype calls to find gangsters.
Australian Skype for Vodafone mobile users will pay $3 monthly for Skype-to-Skype calls. Cheaper than previous plans.
California “elder law” attorneys to bill for Skype consultations. “…legal documents professionally produced in a virtual law firm environment.”
MyChelle Dermaceuticals licensed estheticians to bill for Skype consultations. “MyChelle’s expert team is on-hand to provide professional, effective treatment and skin care recommendations with a custom selection of pure, clean MyChelle Dermaceuticals products.”
Skype’s Skytools framework used to “construct a large fault-tolerant cluster of PostgreSQL.” Hundreds in production. Skytools.
Patch to Skype for Mac zero day vulnerability coming next week.
Privacy International (PI) blogged three concerns about Skype security last week.  Let’s see how they rate on our fear-meter.
1. Risk: Impersonation. Skype lets you present yourself using any name. You could present yourself as someone else or have your identity confused with another user.
My take: I’m going to rate this 1 scared face out of 5 on the fear-meter. On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Systems enable protected speech through anonymity, pseudonymity, and even using a pseudonym similar to someone else’s real name.
Future: Skype can offer to validate identities, either directly (credit cards) or through partners (banks, web sites, employers, governments), and to share a “this looks like a real person who holds this name in real life” badge. Trust builds network value.
2. Risk: Eavesdropping. PI says Skype lets third-parties manipulate downloads because Skype.com doesn’t use https to encrypt file downloads.
My take: 2 of 5 on the fear-meter. The opportunity exists for network hackers to intercept and rewrite downloads, burdening you with spyware, malware, etc. There are easier strategies, like co-opting the source of downloads by law enforcement or political powers, as seen in China and other countries.
Future: Skype could encrypt. It’s relatively cheap for Skype to use Transport Layer Security for downloads. So you’ll only receive malware authorized by Skype’s managers and partners.
3. Risk: Eavesdropping. PI says Skype’s speech compression method (variable bit rate) can reveal what words are spoken, even after encryption. They do this by matching the encrypted profiles of phonemes (the sounds that make up words) with unencrypted profiles. They claim phrases can be identified with a 50% to 80% accuracy, citing a Johns Hopkins University research project by Charles V. Wright, Lucas Ballard, Scott E. Coull, Fabian Monrose, and Gerald M. Masson (go Blue Jays!). The report’s abstract:
Despite the rapid adoption of Voice over IP (VoIP), its security implications are not yet fully understood. Since VoIP calls may traverse untrusted networks, packets should be encrypted to ensure confidentiality. However, we show that when the audio is encoded using variable bit rate codecs, the lengths of encrypted VoIP packets can be used to identify the phrases spoken within a call. Our results indicate that a passive observer can identify phrases from a standard speech corpus within encrypted calls with an average accuracy of 50%, and with accuracy greater than 90% for some phrases. Clearly, such an attack calls into question the efficacy of current VoIP encryption standards. In addition, we examine the impact of various features of the underlying audio on our performance and discuss methods for mitigation.
My take: 3 of 5 on the fear-meter. Yes, it is possible, in theory. Enterprise and government customers will care about this risk and want stronger protection. Meanwhile, crackers, academics, and intelligence agencies are productizing the analysis.
Why only three scared faces? If Nuance, Google Voice, and Skype transcripts are so horrible with raw voice streams, phoneme extraction and phrase encoding must be extremely hard to do with compressed and encrypted data. So only 3 for now.
Future: Skype and others who offer encrypted audio streams will tweak compression and encryption. It may cost a little more audio bandwidth and more CPU/battery. So don’t expect those changes to come too soon.
31 March is the deadline for RIM to give realtime surveillance of Blackberry users to Indian intelligence and law enforcement officials. Nokia started testing its compliance. Will Skype build a back door for India’s cops, spies, and soldiers?
Skype is offering a lovely product. So it might be rude to block ads it sells to global brands.
I’m not so sure. After all, it is my desktop computer. Mine. And my attention. Easily scattered. I routinely block ads in my other browsers. And I always thought ads in competing consumer products were distracting, tacky, time wasting, and intrusive.
 So, is it feasible? Skype hasn’t opened up its client browser to third-parties, so solutions may be not be obvious.
Is it moral? After all, this is Skype’s software and, while they make money just because I am on the network (see Metcalfe’s Law), I’m only renting the software, not owning it. Yet, is there some inherent right to use other people’s software and networks as I see fit, so long as it doesn’t harm the network or others?
And is it legal? Would I be breaking any laws or contracts by running a Skype ad-block program? Would I be suborning an intellectual property crime by offering a $200 bounty for someone to build an app that would let me block Skype on my desktop?
Or Skype could just offer a privacy preference to turn off the ads.
Much less bother.
And so polite.
A friend in Latin America told me he’d subscribed to a virtual private network service to overcome his phone company’s Skype blocking. I asked Phil Blancett, president of Black Oak Computers, operators of StrongVPN.com, about VPNs.
Skype Journal: First off, let’s talk about the problems. Why do people subscribe to virtual private networks to use Skype? What triggers their purchase?
Phil Blancett. Unfortunately some countries believe that Skype undermines their own profit driven VOIP industries that they have. I saw a recent interview with a Dubai official who complained that it’s not fair that Skype allows their consumers a cheaper VOIP system than what they provide. His explanation was they had spent billions on their infrastructure, and to allow Skype to come in and take all the profits was unacceptable.
When the average customer in Dubai can save $500 or more a month by using Skype instead of their state driven VOIP services, they will do just about anything to procure a VPN account. And luckily for them, it’s not difficult at all.
SJ. How widespread are these problems? How many people are affected? Where in the world?
Blancett. Unfortunately the list seems to be growing and not decreasing. Dubai, Belize, or UAE blocks Skype and China can turn if off at times.
SJ. How do VPNs solve that problem? How does it work?
Blancett. We allow a secure connection over our network and ports, thereby bypassing the customers Internet Service Provider connection. With our OpenVPN packages we are able to set the customer up on custom ports, making it near impossible to be blocked.
SJ. I have Skype on my mobile phone, on my PCs, and in several pieces of hardware where a Skype app is embedded. Can VPNs help me with all of them?
Blancett. Yes VPN’s work on all those devices. Keep in mind though that some locations like Oman can block PPTP ports, if that happens then we put the customer on a OpenVPN SSL package. OpenVPN SSL packages require software to be installed, PPTP / L2TP / SSTP packages work within the Operating System existing Network Connections (think back on the old dial up modem days, when you put in a server name, user name and password).
SJ. What’s the process for installing a VPN? Are we talking hardware? Installing software?
Full Story »
 Skype has been flexible on privacy when it comes to major markets. Skype’s China software, distributed through a TOM-Skype joint venture, censors text chats and enables government monitoring. Skype mobile for Verizon Wireless in the US is CALEA compliant, offering contact and call records and live intercepts to American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. India’s government wants similar powers, per an India Times report. The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) will give an ultimatum to RIM, Skype and Google to provide access to conversations within and across India’s borders. A Skype spokesperson told me today they haven’t received a message or directive from the DoT.
Skype for Windows 4.2 asks you to trust Skype with your login credentials to other sites, like Google. Just import contacts to see Skype ask for Google username and password. This is a classic password anti-pattern. It is a poor design choice in 2010 but it’s still seen in many major services.
A better choice: use oAuth so the third-party authenticates you, tells Skype you’re OK, and then gives Skype limited access to your account. In this case, Skype would let Google authenticate you so Skype never sees or stores your Google credentials.
We’ll see if the next major release of the Skype clients and core services retire the password anti-pattern.
Bkis blogged the new computer worm is targeting both Skype and Yahoo! Messenger IM clients. W32.Skyhoo.Worm sends encouraging messages with a web link to your contacts, some of whom may click through and download it as you did. A fast way to be de-friended. Be careful what you click, even from friends.
Skype Journal is blocked by China’s government. Millions work around censorship and monitoring with networking tools like GTunnel. The GTunnel proxy on your PC connects to GTunnel servers. The client connects directly, through the TOR network, or through the Skype network. Connecting through Skype assures your packets are encrypted from beginning to end. This hides your IP address from servers. This also circumvents blockades of target servers like mine.
GTunnel is run by Garden Networks for Freedom of Information, a member of the Global Information Freedom Consortium. When you combine GTunnel with UltraSurf, FreeGate, FirePhoenix, GPass, and Ranking you get a complete suite for surviving online censorship and monitoring.
Caution for Chinese users: Skype cannot assure what you download from TOM-Skype does not include spyware. So download the international version from the Skype.com site or another independent source.
tags: security, censorship, iran, china, gfw, encryption, anonymity, gtunnel, anti-jamming system, jamming, blocking, blocks, blocked, globalinformationfreedom, gift
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private technologist roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
A Times of India report claims Skype shared its encryption with the U.S. and Chinese governments. A Skype spokesperson denies this:
"Reports that Skype has shared its code with the US, China and other governments are groundless.”
The story leads with the Indian Intelligence Bureau asking the Department of Telecommunications for permission to block Skype to deter terrorists. Skype says:
"Skype is aware of reports that certain Intelligence agencies in India have asked the government there to block the use of Skype. While we do not have confirmation of these reports or any directive by the authorities to block Skype, we don’t believe any country or operator should impede consumers’ choice to use Skype or other Internet applications to improve their communications."
Skype won’t say if Indian intelligence agencies have asked Skype for help with interception or tracking criminals, if Skype has helped them, or if Skype is talking with Indian officials about broader policy issues.
The Times says agile criminals are shifting from easy to intercept to harder to intercept technologies. Authority for Indian government interception lies in the definition of telephony. At the moment phones don’t include "over the top" apps like Skype. Ability to intercept rests in domestic control over PSTN termination gateways and the theoretical ability to discover, reassemble, and decrypt Skype packets travelling within India.
"The Cabinet Committee on Security has accepted the recommendation in principle but has not set a date for initiating action" says the story.
There appear to be two forces at work.
One is a law enforcement and intelligence community drive to forbid the ability for citizens to keep secrets. In their values, good people don’t have secrets and bad people’s secrets should be exposed so government can protect the country. This is a generalization but their advocacy to politicians is consistent with that philosophy.
The other force is the telecom industry defending itself. Lobbying has a high return on investment and is more effective at protecting incumbents than changing business models or innovating aggressively. Skype, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL, and Google’s IM/VoIM teams have more designers/engineers innovating in this space than AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon. So they lobby governments to raise barriers to entry (emergency calling, for example).
These two forces produce politicians in Russia lip syncing to Russian telecoms that Skype is unpatriotic, a threat to national security, a threat to the economy, a foreign intrusion. You get politicians in England, Italy, and Germany enlarging police surveillance powers proffering the critical need to bypass Skype encryption to undermine terrorists. Banning or constricting Skype adds to candidates’ "law and order", "strong leader", and "national security" credibility, and pays off their obligations to the communications industry.
India is the world’s second largest mobile market (after China, ahead of the USA), according to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Trai has defended VoIP from barriers to entry to India’s markets. More than 300 million Indians have phones. Customers of India’s telephone and cable ISPs use home grown internet telephony at the rate of 130 million minutes for the year ending 31 March 2009. Skype served 25,500 million Skype-to-Skype minutes in 2009Q2.
Skype has no operations or personnel or portal partners in India.
See also:
- Spooks want govt to block Skype, Mohua Chatterjee, The Times of India
- Indian government pondering blocking Skype, Sean P. Aune, Tech.Blorge
- IB asks govt to block Skype, VoIP services, Dhirendra Singh, Jai Bihar
- Skype: People want total control over mobile phone apps, Matthew Lasar , Ars Technica
- Indian Intelligence asks government to block VoIP calls, siliconindia news bureau
- Indian govt plans to block all Internet telephony for security purposes, Mihir Patkar, Think Digit.
- IB calls for block of VoIP services citing security concerns, TeleGeography
tags: skype, intelligence, security, police, wiretap, intercept, encryption, decryption, india, voip, dot, ib
Call me at +1-510-316-9773, Skype me, follow @skypejournal and @Phil Wolff.
Visit our Skype Journal private roundtable, one of the longest running public Skype chats.
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7 years and 12 days since Skype Journal launched as a stand-alone blog.
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Skype’s man in Washington, Chris Libertelli, now leads the Netflix government affairs team. While at Skype his deft touch with the FCC helped Skype assure access in US markets and partner with wireless operators. He also led Skype’s government affairs operations for the US states, Canada and Latin America. Paul Bond says usage-based-billing is the hot issue. With Chris on hand, I expect net neutrality to continue to be on Netflix’ agenda but take a backseat to battling for Netflix and its customers’ right to stream. Skype hasn’t announced who will fill Chris’ shoes.
Phil Wolff builds realtime collaboration products for effective people. Phil advises the Personal Data Ecosystem Consortium and is a director of the DataPortability Project. Email editor@skypejournal.com, Skype evanwolf, tweet @evanwolf, G+ or call +1-510-444-8234 to talk with Phil. Skype Journal is independent of Skype. 
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