mgcarley
Founder, Hayai Broadband
The article was rather full of BS and factual inaccuracies.
Firstly, VOIP (phone-to-phone) is not allowed anyway which is why there is no equivalent of Vonage etc in India.
This is also why Skype et al will never offer India as one of their free-calling countries - although it's not bad at about 0.05€/min anyway - comparable to calling Russia - and why you could never get a SkypeIn number for India.
Secondly, the government cites that Skype has shared its codes with the US and China: it has not. It never has. It has shared source-code with itself in China (Skype?????????-??????????), much in the same way that an Indian subsidiary would receive necessary source code to build a project for a foreign entity. It just so happens that, like India, China requires foreign entities to have a Chinese partner. Skype does not have any such subsidiaries or partners in India.
One would assume that Skype would have given a special authentication code/algorithm to China, not the one that the rest of us use. To do otherwise would be ludicrous.
I think it was Austria who took another route and developed a trojan to get around the encryption.
But in any case, if the government did end up blocking Skype for the reasons of encryption, they would have to block ALL forms of secure transport: HTTPS, FTPS, SSH etc, which would be a big annoyance for people like me who need to do things like access their internet banking facilities overseas.
Firstly, VOIP (phone-to-phone) is not allowed anyway which is why there is no equivalent of Vonage etc in India.
This is also why Skype et al will never offer India as one of their free-calling countries - although it's not bad at about 0.05€/min anyway - comparable to calling Russia - and why you could never get a SkypeIn number for India.
Secondly, the government cites that Skype has shared its codes with the US and China: it has not. It never has. It has shared source-code with itself in China (Skype?????????-??????????), much in the same way that an Indian subsidiary would receive necessary source code to build a project for a foreign entity. It just so happens that, like India, China requires foreign entities to have a Chinese partner. Skype does not have any such subsidiaries or partners in India.
One would assume that Skype would have given a special authentication code/algorithm to China, not the one that the rest of us use. To do otherwise would be ludicrous.
I think it was Austria who took another route and developed a trojan to get around the encryption.
But in any case, if the government did end up blocking Skype for the reasons of encryption, they would have to block ALL forms of secure transport: HTTPS, FTPS, SSH etc, which would be a big annoyance for people like me who need to do things like access their internet banking facilities overseas.