Renu­ka Singh

Caribbean mo­bile provider Dig­i­cel has ef­fec­tive­ly barred users from ac­cess­ing pop­u­lar "free calls" ap­pli­ca­tions Viber, Tan­go and Nim­buzz.Dig­i­cel has blocked free voice call­ing ap­pli­ca­tions that utilise the Voice Over In­ter­net Pro­to­col (VoIP) on its ser­vice.In an e-mail ex­change with the Sun­day Guardian, Dig­i­cel's co­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Pen­ny Gomez con­firmed the ban.

"Un­li­censed VoIP op­er­a­tors like Viber and Nim­buzz use tele­coms net­works to de­liv­er their ser­vices, but they do not pay any mon­ey for the priv­i­lege."This unau­tho­rised ac­tiv­i­ty puts enor­mous pres­sures on band­width–which means cus­tomers' da­ta us­age ex­pe­ri­ence is neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed as a re­sult," she said."As such, Dig­i­cel has been forced to take firm ac­tion to pre­vent this par­a­sitic ac­tiv­i­ty."Gomez said VoIP ser­vices by their na­ture are net­work in­ten­sive and giv­en pri­or­i­ty in terms of de­liv­ery across the net­work.

"Which in turn means that oth­er cus­tomers' brows­ing will be im­pact­ed. Dig­i­cel us­es a sep­a­rate net­work for voice so that qual­i­ty on our 4G net­work is not im­pact­ed by our own voice ser­vice," she said.She said while Dig­i­cel "in­vest­ed mil­lions in its net­work and busi­ness," un­li­censed VoIP reaped the ben­e­fits with no cap­i­tal in­vest­ment."The sit­u­a­tion is un­ten­able on a medi­um- to long-term ba­sis and so we are tak­ing a stand," she said.

Gomez said while it was "un­for­tu­nate" that Dig­i­cel was forced to take this step, the VoIP providers should pay "a fair price for the ser­vices that they are cur­rent­ly tak­ing from us for free."She did not dis­close how much mon­ey Dig­i­cel lost as a re­sult of the free ser­vices."Once an agree­ment is in place, then Dig­i­cel will have no hes­i­ta­tion in al­low­ing cus­tomers to once again use their ser­vices," she said.

In a re­lease on so­cial me­dia, Dig­i­cel re­peat­ed the state­ment.The com­pa­ny al­so likened the free ser­vice to a shop­per tak­ing goods for free."Just as a con­sumer would not ex­pect to go to a su­per­mar­ket and take the goods off the shelves for free, so the VoIP op­er­a­tors must be forced to pay their dues so that our cus­tomers can feel the ben­e­fits of our in­vest­ments," the com­pa­ny said.

Viber founder to chal­lenge move

The Sun­day Guardian con­tact­ed Viber founder and chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Tal­mon Mar­co, on Twit­ter, in­form­ing him of the ban and ask­ing "What is trig­ger­ing these de­vel­op­ments?"Mar­co replied, "You mean, why are they do­ing this?"The Sun­day Guardian replied, "Yes. Is Dig­i­cel ex­pect­ing pay­ments for their in­fra­struc­ture?" To which Mar­co replied, "I be­lieve Dig­i­cel is al­ready paid for the use of its in­fra­struc­ture–by its cus­tomers."

When asked if he in­tends to by­pass any se­cu­ri­ty bans Dig­i­cel may put in place, Mar­co said, "If they (se­cu­ri­ty bans) ex­ist, yes. They will be by­passed au­to­mat­i­cal­ly in a day or two." Dig­i­cel has al­ready blocked its cus­tomers from ac­cess­ing the ap­pli­ca­tions in Haiti and Ja­maica, be­fore im­pos­ing the ban in T&T.On Ju­ly 2, the Ja­maican Glean­er re­port­ed Mar­co as say­ing that Viber "will soon be up and run­ning, notwith­stand­ing ef­forts by Dig­i­cel and Lime to de­rail it."

In a se­ries of Twit­ter ex­changes with Ja­maican Glean­er re­porter Richard Browne over the past two days, Mar­co seemed con­fi­dent that Viber would be able to by­pass the soft­ware block.Mar­co tweet­ed then that "the Viber sys­tem should fin­ish by­pass­ing this block in the next few hours. Users may want to re­think their choice of car­ri­er," he tweet­ed.One day lat­er, he asked, "Is it work­ing now?"Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that in Ja­maica, Dig­i­cel's block has not been by­passed by any of the free call­ing ap­pli­ca­tions.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, ma­jor­i­ty state-owned provider Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T and its mo­bile arm Bmo­bile said it "de­clined from of­fer­ing any com­ment on Dig­i­cel's de­ci­sion to block VoIP ser­vice providers."BMo­bile said it should be not­ed that VoIP was an in­escapable fea­ture of mod­ern telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions.

"BMo­bile's pol­i­cy on the mat­ter as far as use of VoIP on its mo­bile net­work is con­cerned is that we pro­vide cus­tomers with a con­duit to voice and da­ta ser­vices. Cus­tomers pay us a sub­scrip­tion fee for this ac­cess and once cus­tomers have bought da­ta ser­vices from bMo­bile, cus­tomers de­ter­mine how they wish to use their da­ta," com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er Graeme Suite said.

"VoIP es­sen­tial­ly is da­ta on the mo­bile net­work much like e-mail, YouTube, so­cial me­dia or down­load­ing apps and games. Each lo­cal provider must there­fore de­cide, based on what it knows of the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of its net­work, how to treat with cus­tomers us­ing VoIP," he said.

TATT: It's a ret­ro­grade step

Chair­man of the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (Tatt), Sel­by Wil­son, yes­ter­day de­scribed the block as a "ret­ro­grade step.""That is where the tech­nol­o­gy is go­ing," Wil­son said, in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day.

Wil­son said free talk ap­pli­ca­tions like Viber and Tan­go were de­scribed with­in the in­dus­try as "over-the-top" ser­vices and were pro­vid­ed by or­gan­i­sa­tions that do not have their own in­fra­struc­ture and would of­ten use the ex­ist­ing stru­tures built by a coun­try's ser­vice provider. This is the case with Dig­i­cel and the VoIP ap­pli­ca­tion own­ers."It is un­for­tu­nate that Dig­i­cel took the de­ci­sion to block them, but my un­der­stand­ing is that the block is a ne­go­ti­a­tion tool to say 'if you want to use the ser­vice come and talk with us,'" he said.

Wil­son said it was al­so un­for­tu­nate that the coun­try's leg­is­la­tion did not pre­vent Dig­i­cel from these ma­noeu­vres even though or­gan­i­sa­tions such as Viber and Tan­go were us­ing the lo­cal in­fra­struc­ture with­out pay­ing for it."There is no pol­i­cy or leg­is­la­tion, no le­gal ba­sis for block­ing the ser­vice," he said.He said Dig­i­cel did not in­form or dis­cuss the move with Tatt."I be­lieve they should have, if on­ly out of cour­tesy," he said.

Fol­low­ing the im­po­si­tion of the ban, Wil­son said Tatt would en­gage Dig­i­cel in di­a­logue to bet­ter un­der­stand the rea­son for the block.