Dec 31 2010
China declares Skype illegal
After having already banned Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, the Chinese government has now decided to outlaw Skype, as well. The move means that all Internet IP phone services will now be considered illegal within the country, except for those offered by two state-operated telecom companies — China Unicom and China Telecom.
The new regulation will ban all ip talk phone calls made from computers to land lines, but it may still be legal for users to make computer-to-talk calls. The Chinese ministry of Industry and Information Technology has not yet announced when the ban will go into effect, and Skype declined to comment on “speculation” that its phone service would be blocked on the mainland anytime soon. “Users in China currently can access Skype via Tom Online, our partner,” a company spokeswoman affirmed.
Others, however, aren’t convinced that China will be able to completely root out competing online phone services. A professor at Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications, told the Telegraph that a comprehensive Skype shut-down is “very unlikely.” Even if the government did manage to wipe out the service consumers could always turn to similar services, like iTalkBB, or ibbtalk.