some folks have been asking about troubles with vonage and skype...

Skpe was down for 3 weeks part Skype fault, part XP fault & a bit of
blockage from BTL as well. Skype however has been up for the past week &
working well on all OS platforms. Vonage is working as well, have not had
problems with that yet!

YapJack is working very well.

BTL is shutting down Vonage and all voip countrywide. They plan to offer a similiar service for alot more money, which they can do because the Govt gave them a monopoly on telecommunications. Its time to wage cyberwar on BTL, anyone know how to infiltrate their block on voip? I'm in.

"Infiltrate their block"? I'm not sure what you mean by that. If you want to hurt BTL, I appreciate your emotion, but I'm not sure it is constructive.

The techy solution is to use a third party proxy to "tunnel" your VoIP traffic through standard UDP/TCP ports (i.e. port 80 http used for web traffic). With Skype, this proxy configuration exists in the app although there are no major services advertising out there... YET. If you are using Vonage, this would require your Vonage ATA adapter to be reconfigured to use a standard port (much harder). This being said, if you are having problems with either service, use Google to search for a workaround. There are likely going to be new ways to get around ISP blocking every day.

Bottom line is BTL is going to have to wake up one of these days. Sure they need to develop their own VoIP product, but they need to make it compelling to us consumers. They cannot supress competition, they need to put a package together that makes so much sense that we all stop using the alternatives. Give us a Internet/Voice/Email/Hosting package for a reasonable price and voila, you've got a happy/growing customer base.

High speed access means more tourism, more long-term stays for telecommuters, better education and so on. The net is a utility, the applications and content one wishes to communicate are one's choice. If voters don't make this an issue, then we better prepare for BTL to make a lot more choices on what we can see or hear.

Imagine BTL blocking access to the UDP or PUP websites?!?! Imagine BTL reading your emails and IM conversations!?!

The tools they are using to block VoIP are the same tools used to track, log and report on content. ISPs that have attempted to do this in US/EU have been slammed and now part of their PR approach is to stress privacy...

My two cents.

PS My Vonage works perfectly, I have never had a problem. I cannot say the same for my BTL land line...

Personally I think you lot are very nasty people-I cannot believe that you are attacking a wonderful Belizean co. like BTL-they do their best and like everyone want to make a huge amount of money for their beloved leader (who is of course english)-it is grossly unfair for people to try and stop them making mega amounts of dosh.

"Imagine BTL reading your emails", actually they have. Just ask Sharon Matola.

imagine being able to call someone back from your cellphone without first having to edit the number b/c BTL data now includes a 1 or something...arrrgh/I'm done now.


Hooray for Simon-- a heroic death-defying jump for SAGA on Sunday!

Email Lessons Of The Day:

1) Don't use a @btl.net email address. BTL's core competency is not email, let alone secure email.

2) Use a free commercial email address, I prefer gmail (google mail) at the moment. Yahoo Mail is another good alternative. You can use any standard POP client to access your gmail account. You can move all around the world and keep the same address.

3) If you are concerned about "anybody" reading your email, use a secured connection via SSL (https), or use a PGP encrypted message.

Katie, do you think it will take a long time for them to offer their service and do you have any idea how much "a lot more" is going to be?
They should have blocked those people after providing their service.

Would DirecWay offer a solution for voip, like Vonage (bypassing BTL)?

SIN

Would DirecWay offer a solution for voip, like Vonage (bypassing BTL)?

SIN