China buys Skype blocking software

The Chinese government has reached an agreement to buy a software from a US company that blocks free Internet phone calls like Skype.

The software vendor is Verso Technologies and the PC-to-Phone blocking software that the company sold to China is just a trial version, but the report did not reveal the company name. Chinese telecommunications directly buy this software.

Verso's software allows carriers to selectively disable unwanted network bandwidth usage. In the short term, the Chinese Government is trying to prevent PC-to-Phone and PC-to-PC calls in big cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen and will deploy all Free Internet phone service blocking system for the next two years if the test results are successful.

In September 2005, China Telecom, China's leading state-owned telecommunications company, is considering closing down lost telephone service companies due to free Internet telephony. Currently, in China there are about 3.4 to 4 million Skype users. This explains why Skype is the first target of this campaign.

Ba Lam