272Does VoIP Eat up Bandwidth?
posted on October 15th, 2008
Having used VoIP problem free for quite a while I was confused as to why recently I had been having so many problems. The quality of sound has gone right down and latency issues have increased significantly. Users on VoIP online forums in the US and other countries, including Germany and Mexico, having issues since last year. For a while VoIP might seem like a good deal for the average person, more established interests in the telecommunication industry view it differently - and are doing something about it.
Consultation
Well aware of what has happened in the rest of the world the United Kingdom telecoms regulator Ofcom took the decisive action in February of announcing that it will look at the increasing Voice over IP industry and report next month on whether new laws are necessary to shield it. The consultation document says: “VoIP service providers have expressed concern that their ability to provide a reliable service may be impacted by internet access providers (ISPs) selectively degrading or blocking their VoIP traffic.”
Ofcom says it has no proof this is occurring in the UK; only about half a million customers use it. But the prediction is for that to rise by 2.5m in the next six months.
And VoIP blocking occurs in other countries, more often than not those where there is still only a single incumbent telecoms company. In Saudi Arabia, for example national carrier Saudi Telecom is using software from US supplier Narus to bar all Voice over IP phone calls.
Telecommunication companies in the United States as well as other countries are hesitant to have their bandwidth used by traffic from which they receive no funds and have been challenged over similar alleged incidents of internet telephony blocking. Stopping Voice over IP traffic is a challenge but does not break the law and barring precise types of internet traffic is on the increase.
The European based VoIP giant Skype now owned by eBay has been particularly controversial. Skype is used by over 75m people. But not everyone wants Skype on their network.
Skype is seen by a lot of people to pose a potential security risk as it creates an encrypted tunnel out of the network and forms supernodes that sit on it and set up VoIP calls. There is considerable debate about how much bandwidth such supernodes consume. There have been claims that in supernode mode, Skype may even saturate a 100 Mbps line.
