China VoIP ban is all hype

Nothing grabs readers' attention more than a shocking headline. Sadly, boiling a story down to a clickable headline often makes for misinformed journalists and readers. A recent example is the "Skype gets banned in China" story. Although we never ran that exact headline!

According to TeleGeography, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has come out to clarify the intentions of its recent move to crack down on 'illegal' VoIP. Apparently, the moves are seeking to fight online crime and fraud that take advantage of illegal VoIP. The plan is not to ban VoIP in the country as the Ministry recognizes it as growing technology and they also do not plan to go after PC to PC calling services.

It should also be noted that, as we pointed out last week, Skype's Chinese partner has stated there is nothing to worry about for that particular company. The laws state that non-Chinese companies are barred from certain activities like PC-to-PSTN calling, but one would guess that since Skype has a partnership with a mainland company, they are not breaking the rules.

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