A report in the news today talks about Shanghai Telecom ordering network management systems from California-based Narus to “detect and mitigate rogue VoIP traffic on their network.”
Keep in mind that international voice services continue to be a source of foreign capital in many jurisdictions. In China, the government has allowed carriers to block traffic that competes with their own. Shanghai Telecom is acting within China’s regulatory environment.
While we may try to make this an issue of freedom of speech and network neutrality, I think the bigger issue is whether nations continue to have the ability to set and enforce their own laws in a world of IP.
There are many that believe that IP means that no force, whether government or corporate, should be permitted to interfere with their freedoms. Throw away intellectual property claims, make tolls illegal, protest against blocking of images – whether illegal or not.
Others have approached the internet with a view that the wild west can be tamed – that law and order can be extended to the new frontier.
Canada’s ISPs will knock down a web site hosted in Canada with merely offensive content, but will not take action to block websites hosted elsewhere with content found to be illegal by a Canadian court. We’ll be looking at the issue of Illegal Content on the Internet at The 2006 Canadian Telecom Summit in June.
The Canadian Telecom Summit is more than just VoIP. It is where Canada’s telecom industry communicates.