I have recently been grumbling quite a lot about various internet services being banned in China, but the latest is quite a shocker – Skype (and all other VoiPs for that matter) are to be banned in China!
According to the article on the People’s Daily website, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has declared that all phone services not provided by China’s two state owned telecommunications giants – China Mobile and China Unicom – are illegal and to be shut down.
Its not clear to me whether this decision was made in order to protect the state owned firms or just another measure to prevent people from connecting with one another without the governments interference. Either way, I feel sad about these developments. If anyone ever had hope that the internet will create a public sphere in China and facilitate more open discussion and transparency, I think the past few years have shown that it’s just not going to happen.
I can only hope that with millions of Skype users in China already, the outrage will be too great for the government to follow through.