Skype wants British operators to stop managing VoIP traffic; Ofcom may agree

With Great Britain's regulatory agency suggesting it may intervene, Skype is gearing up its push to force negotiations with mobile phone operators who have been blocking VoIP calls from their networks.

Ofcom, which oversees the British telecom system, said that mobile service providers that restrict VoIP calls are, in fact, also blocking innovation. It said if operators don't relent, it might take action.

Skype, which now is a part of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) after being acquired for $8.5 billion, has contended that Skype regularly is "subject to prohibition and/or overcharging by several operators, even though (Skype) is not a  band-hungry application, nor one that is difficult for a network to handle." Skype said a typical Skype call consumes an average 6-20 Kbps, or about the same amount as a normal webpage.

"You would expect us to be more impatient than Ofcom," Jean-Jacques Sahel, head of European regulatory affairs at Skype, said. "In Europe, there's still a huge amount of restrictions."

Skype calls aren't managed by major U.S. mobile phone operators.

For more:
- see this Bloomberg article

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