Jordan Blocks Skype Users
What is it about Skype that causes so many different institutions from universities to developing nations to worry? Actually, that’s not a real tough question to answer. It’s peer-to-peer telephony system is disruptive to established competitors, and its usage is difficult to monitor. The latest to jump on board this bandwagon is the country of Jordan, which has been informing ISPs that they must block the service.
The reason here seems pretty clear; Skype is threatening the profits of the incumbent carrier, Jordan Telecom. Naturally, this is upsetting many of Skype’s users in the country. Amusingly, the above article (from a Jordanian news site) criticizes the government’s actions, but not for blocking the service, but for failing to explain its rationale. The writer apparently feels that if they’d explained that they were doing it for the protection of telecom investors then all would be forgiven. Somehow we’re guessing that the pissed off users wouldn’t be satisfied with that explanation.
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