The Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, a Russian business lobby, is planning to draft laws banning the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone services, citing them as a danger to the country’s security and businesses.
The lobby, in association with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s political party, has created a working group to draft a legislation that could restrict or even ban the use of Skype, Google voice and other such VoIP telephone services. This move is a result of the concern that revenues of Russian telecom companies are on a decline due to foreign operators of VoIP services.
The lobby’s press release said: “Without government restrictions, IP telephony causes certain concerns about security. Most of the service operators working in Russia, such as Skype and ICQ, are (of) foreign (origin). It is, therefore, necessary to protect the native companies in this sector and so forth.
The telecom executives, in a meeting earlier this week, described VoIP services as encroaching foreign entities that need to be regulated by the government. As an alternative to foreign VoIPs, these telecom companies offered to create their own services that would allow them to be safely available to the Russian public.
