Skype use blocked by China Telecom

Skype Technologies says it is looking into reports that China Telecom is blocking access to its popular internet telephony service on the mainland.

The move comes after online postings and mainland reports, including one in the Shanghai Daily, said the mainland's largest fixed-line carrier was blocking access to service from Skype in Shenzhen.

The reports said China Telecom planned to eventually block the service throughout its coverage area nationwide because it threatened its long-distance revenue. They also said the carrier had created a blacklist of people who use the service in Shenzhen and threatened to fine anyone circumventing the blockage.

"We are investigating these reports," said Kat James, spokeswoman for Luxembourg-based Skype. She declined further comment, as the VoIP (voice-over-internet protocol) software firm was gathering more information.

Skype software and related services, which allow people to make calls from their personal computers to regular phones, enable subscribers on the mainland to dial to major western markets in the United States and Europe for as little as two eurocents per minute compared with rates closer to US$1 per minute from China Telecom.

Hong Kong-listed Tom Online, a Beijing-based provider of wireless value-added services that has a year-old relationship with Skype for internet instant-messaging services, said its product was still operational.

Elaine Feng, executive vice-president of sales and marketing at Tom Online, said the company was providing only PC-to-PC online communications, not the PC-to-phone services, which are highly regulated. But Ms Feng noted that people could directly access the international SkypeOut service, for low-cost phone calls over the internet, if they had the use of foreign credit cards.

Last year, Tom Online developed a tailor-made simplified Chinese-language edition of Skype products for Chinese users. With more than 3.4 million registered users, the mainland is one of Skype's top three markets.

A China Telecom spokesman refused to comment on reports about the Shenzhen blockage, but said: "Under the current relevant laws and regulations of China, PC-to-phone services are strictly regulated and only China Telecom and (the nation's other fixed-line carrier) China Netcom are permitted to carry out trials on a very limited basis."