I like Skype

I like Skype.

So do my wife, daughter, sister, grandson, friends and millions of other people I don’t know and never will. And we’ve all got used to it with Skype letting us not just communicate what’s happening to friends and family, but actually feeling like we’ve brought them into our home. But there’s a fly in the ointment. Apparently the esteemed Ministry of Telecommunications here doesn’t like it at all and has seen fit to install hardware and software that blocks a number of voice and video systems with Skype being next on the list. Is this just another groundless rumour, or, if it’s true, ARE THEY BARKING MAD?

Is it possible to stop it, well VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) technology has been illegal in Lebanon since 2002, but like so many laws here this one has not been enforced. Until now, as one after another piece of VOIP hardware or software has just stopped working here in the last month. What’s next on the agenda, pulling the plug on being able to dial international numbers perhaps (its only 3 years since all international calls had to go via an operator and were cut after 20 minutes)?

So let me try to explain why a decision to regress by blocking Skype and others is insane in that government revenues from telecommunications will be REDUCED. Use us as an example, in our home we have the highest available speed broadband service that Lebanon can offer and we pay extra because we always exceed the quota of electrons were allowed to vibrate in a given month. Should the ministry ever make a good decision, like upping the broadband speed, we’ll be there among the first in the queue. But if VOIP and Skype are cut, we won’t need the speed and our internet bills will halve. The result will be a reduction in revenue to Ogero (the Lebanese government owned PTT). Ahha, I hear you say, but then you’ll use the international telephone service more. Err, no, I don’t think so; let’s say I want to talk to my daughter in Spain, I’ll text or email her with a time and she will then call me on one of Telefonica’s (that’s the Spanish PTT) cheap international cards, same with my wife’s brother in California. Doubtless blogs will appear telling people how to make cheap calls to Lebanon cutting everyone’s bill here as the costs are transferred overseas, less money for OGERO again

With the Lebanese skilled in languages and technology, Lebanon should be a natural home for call centres, but without VOIP, the cost of running them is too high. So say good bye to a whole business segment’s worth of opportunity, thus contributing to the frightening exodus of many of the best and best-educated of the country’s youth. And an opportunity for future additional revenue lost to Ogero.

There isn’t time or space here to go into the effects on improved financial receipts for governments that privatize telecommunications, but that surely would be the best solution if cash creation were the objective.

Not only do I like the talking movies of friends and family that Skype offers, I like Hollywood’s efforts since sound was added to silent movies, and I wouldn’t want to go back to the silent picture days nor the pictureless voice. There can, nay must, be no going back to the old ways.