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By Jonathan Clark This story was originally published in the Mexico edition of The Miami Herald on May 8, 2005. For months, Mark, a small businessman based in Mexico City, had been using his Voice over Internet Protocol service Vonage to make inexpensive long-distance telephone calls without problem. Then in March, the quality of his calls declined precipitously. "The calls have become so completely garbled that now the service is essentially unusable," he said. At the same time, posters to Internet bulletin boards such as dslreports.com, baja.net and vonage-forum.com began reporting similar problems with their Vonage service in Mexico. And many of the posters pointed blame at their Internet service provider Prodigy and its parent company, telephone monopoly Telmex. Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a technology that allows long-distance telephone calls to be made across a broadband Internet connection at a fraction of the price of conventional phone service. When Vonage's VoIP service suddenly began to fail, the company and its subscribers in Mexico cried foul. They charged that Telmex was protecting its long-distance telephone market dominance by "choking" the cheaper VoIP calls along its network. "What Telmex is doing is they are looking at their customers' behavior, in terms of looking at what IP addresses they are using and what kind of traffic is going over that broadband network," said Kelly Larabee, spokesperson for Vonage, the market leader for residential VoIP service in the United States. "And so if they see you using Vonage, they basically take your broadband speed and slow it way down to prevent the quality from being usable." 'DISCONCERTED' BY THE ALLEGATIONS Mark, the small businessman in Mexico City, who asked that his last name not be used out of concern for service reprisals from Telmex, decided to prove this theory for himself. First, he plugged his computer directly into his broadband Internet connection. Then, he plugged it in via the Vonage voice adapter modem which connects his telephone to the Internet. He says he found that the bandwidth to his computer was significantly reduced when it was plugged through the Vonage modem. Mark's conclusion was that Prodigy/Telmex is able to identify the presence of a Vonage modem, and then slow bandwidth accordingly. Computer engineers contacted by The Herald concurred that Mark's test could indeed show that Telmex is intentionally choking Vonage's modems. However, they said that a software glitch or a flaw in the modem itself might also explain the slowdown. Contacted for comment, Telmex spokeswoman Concepcion Rivera said that the company had been "disconcerted" by the allegations and denied any misconduct. "Telmex has not taken a single action to prevent its customers from communicating (via Vonage)," she said. "Everything we have seen indicates that the problem is happening because this service is not properly configured with Telmex," Rivera said. "And Telmex in no way can guarantee the proper functioning of third-party services or devices that are not properly configured to Telmex or Prodigy." Vonage is not the only foreign VoIP provider to suggest wrongdoing by Telmex, however. European-based Skype is the world's largest Internet telephone service provider, with 35 million subscribers worldwide and more than 300,000 in Mexico. Unlike Vonage, Skype's service does not require a voice modem. Instead, users make their calls after first logging onto the company's website. But some Skype customers in Mexico who use the service through a Prodigy account have complained of being blocked from accessing the site. "We understand from user reports and other sources that Skype.com is being blocked in areas covered by Telmex, although we can't confirm that Telmex specifically is blocking the Skype site," the company said in an official statement. "We encourage all broadband subscribers in this area to contact their Internet service provider and demand the open access they pay for." Despite the complaints from the companies and their users, representatives from Mexico's Federal Competition Commission, or CFC, say they have not registered any formal grievances against Telmex from domestic or international VoIP providers. And Lorena Romo, spokeswoman for the consumer protection agency Profeco, says that while her agency receives numerous complaints against Telmex over billing and service disputes, it has not registered any formal complaints against the company for blocking VoIP service. For its part, Vonage says it is powerless to confront Telmex. "Because we don't operate in Mexico, we have very limited capability to resolve these Telmex issues," said Brooke Schulz, vice president for corporate communications at Vonage. "So if we go to the Mexican government and say, 'Force Telmex to stop doing this,' they're just going to say, 'Well, who are you? You don't even operate in our country.' We don't have a means of influence there." CONCERN IN WASHINGTON But Vonage's allegations against Telmex have reached the government in Washington, said one U.S. trade official, adding that even if the United States is able to find evidence of malicious behavior by Telmex against VoIP users, it may be difficult to confront the problem. "NAFTA doesn't cover voice transmissions - (Mexico) made sure to keep that out of the agreement," said the trade official, who was not authorized to give his name. "But on the WTO (World Trade Organization) side, they do have a commitment. In any case, it's not clear exactly where the regulations stand (on VoIP)." The WTO has ruled against Telmex in the past, finding it guilty in 2004 of overcharging U.S. consumers and businesses on long-distance connection fees to Mexico. And that track record, along with a recent U.S. Federal Trade Commission ruling against North Carolina-based Madison River Communications for blocking VoIP calls, is fueling the U.S. investigation. "Telmex has a history of foul play," the trade official said, "and while we don't yet have hard evidence against them, from the patterns, it would appear that they are degrading their circuits the same way that (Madison River) was. So we've started informal chats on this with the Mexican government, and we are interested in a conversation with Telmex as well." |