Russian users may be left without VoIP-telephony service Skype. Representatives Committee of Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) on telecommunications and information technologies are talking about improving the national legislation in the field of communication - one of the paragraphs of the "improvement" may be the ban "Skype."
July 21, at a meeting RUIE first deputy director of "megaphone" Valery Yermakov said that IP-telephony "parasite." Operators are not pleased that IP-telephony services using the existing infrastructure for their own enrichment, while the owners of networks do not get this. In addition, mobile operators are afraid that customers will choose the IP-telephony, which significantly reduce the income of the owners of networks.
Some signs of "outflow" of users to Skype is already there. For example, the voice services market in Russia in 2008, according to the Minkomsvyazi was 972 billion rubles - a whole 80% of the total market services. Clients of SIP-operators to pay 1 minute consuming 10 minutes within the network. A value of paid services at the IP-telephony operators in 1,5-2 times lower than that of traditional ones.
In his speech, Valery Yermakov said that he sees two ways of development, resulting in traditional operators would have satisfied. First, it is possible to protect investments and to deal with VoIP-services. And secondly - the operators can provide similar services. Meanwhile, the situation is developing in such a way that by 2010 40% of traffic would relate to the services of IP-telephony operators.
As a result of the meeting of the committee members RUIE it was decided to form a working group to develop measures to improve the regulatory framework. In particular, officials are going to draw attention to the fact that Skype fellow and earn while in Russia, but do not pay any taxes here. And the interests of customers are not protected by the fact that providers of IP-telephony is not officially represented in Russia.
Western operators have started to fight with the "Skype" is the spring - when the American company AT & T announced its intention to limit the Skype-calls of Americans supported the initiative of a large German operator Deutsche Telekom.
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