Will VoIP Join the Telco Counterrevolution?

[mattpark]

As telecom operators add their own VoIP services, they may block competitors' VoIP to protect their own.

Voice over IP is clearly a revolutionary technology. It has the power to topple traditional technical, business, and regulatory models. Having the power and using it, though, are two different things. VoIP could just as easily become a tool of entrenched telcos, part of the status quo they're trying to protect rather than the competitive turmoil they're trying to prevent.

Which way it will go remains an open question. But the front line in this epic struggle between the established and the disruptive for control of a rapidly evolving technology will be efforts by telcos and other well-funded VoIP providers to block competitors' VoIP on their networks. It's a technically tricky and politically delicate task rife with contradiction.

VoIP blocking actually has a long and colorful history in much of the world. The blocking can be as blatant as closing a router port, or as subtle as forgetting to follow up on certain kinds of incident reports. It can be regulatory or technical, though regulatory blocking usually requires technical enforcement. Either way, it has long been a weapon by which established telecom companies tried to cripple VoIP's potential to bring revolutionary change to their markets.

Call Orange from O2 and you can expect a big bill, therefore you most likely to not do it. Will this carry over in to the VoIP world?

Matt