PITA Newsletter
Anger Over Blocked VoIP Connections
To have or not to have Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP is what Telephone Pa-cific Ltd, (Telpac) was gritting its teeth about when it came to light that Fiji’s international telecommunications provider, FINTEL, had decided to block VoIP connections.
Telpac’s gripe lay in what it called a disregard on the part of FINTEL for individual rights. Telpac including ISP company Connect, Telecom Fiji’s spin-off ISP company, revealed affected business through their customers, which although now restored was a cause for concern for VoIP users.
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The blockage by FINTEL had angered the Fiji regulatory authorities who instructed FINTEL to restore the service.
It is understood the telecommunications regulatory unit director Josua Turaganivalu wrote to FINTEL telling them that only the telecommunications regulatory unit, now part of the finance ministry, had the powers to “restrict or take off” any telecom service.
Telpac managed to bypass the obstacle, but other Fiji users of VoIP software such as Net2Phone and CoolTalk, said Telpac boss Tim Gibbons, were unable to use the service.
The action taken by FINTEL was what Gibbons called filtering-sieving information through different routers and different programming methods.
“A host or a carrier can single out particular web addresses and block data from going through them,” Gibbons said.
Telpac had taken an aggressive approach contacting the United States Attorney General’s Office, the Federal Communications Commission and the United States Department of Commerce as well as Fiji authorities.
Why United States? Gibbons referred to the breach of international laws. A person on the receiving end of credit card information, for instance, having that data intercepted ultimately amounts to wire fraud regardless of who was involved in the interception process.
A report was launched with the Criminal Investigations Department in Fiji quoting a direct violation of the Fair Trading Decree and the Post Telecommunications Act.
“I know I wave that book around a lot. It’s just going to take a company that’s going to invest the dollars in ensuring the laws are applied in the high court.
“Those are going to take care of civil matters. There needs to be a push by other people. The people need to demonstrate their wanting of these laws enforced.”
The clause referred to in the Fair Trading laws related to the misuse of market power.
Telpac has continually lashed out against what it considers FINTEL’s unreasonably high call rates. The company with United States roots had set up base in Fiji last year as a telephone callback business.
Meanwhile, a Telecommunications Oversight Committee (TOC) of Fiji, a non-profit organisation, is being set up to “distribute accurate information to the proper government officials that are charged with deciding the tariff rebalancing for the country.”
Gibbons noted that TOC would act as a “community watchdog on both the telecommunications companies and government officials who preside over such matters.”
