Wall Street Journal | Jason Dean and Owen Fletcher | January 3, 2011
Is China’s government going after Skype?
Media reports over the past week have raised that prospect in relation to a government clampdown on “illegal” voice-over-Internet-protocol, or VoIP, telephone services.
But it’s far from clear at this point that Skype is, in fact, a target.
The recent spate of reports has its roots in a brief notice (in Chinese), dated Dec. 10, on the website of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. “Currently, our ministry is working with relevant departments on launching an effort to strike against illegal VoIP services, and we are collecting clues from the public about illegal VoIP cases,” said the notice, which listed a phone number people can call to report such services. “We welcome people from all walks of life to report clues on illegal VoIP using their real names. Our ministry will do whatever is legally possible to protect the confidentiality of those who report.”
The notice made no mention of Skype, nor of any other company.
Skype’s service is, of course, VoIP-based, but it’s far from the only one in China, where numerous smaller operations are using the technology to try to compete with the big state carriers.
Nor is Skype’s China service something the government would need help from tattletales to know about. Skype operates openly in China through TOM-Skype, a joint venture initiated in October 2004 with the TOM Online unit of TOM Group Ltd., the Hong Kong-listed media company controlled by billionaire Li Ka-shing. The venture, formally known as Tel-Online Ltd., is 49% owned by Skype and 51% by TOM Online. It claimed more than 88 million registered users at the end of June–although on average only two million connected each month, according to a Skype regulatory filing in the U.S.
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