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The government of Taiwan said Monday that it plans to bar the use of VOIP as a condition of issuing licenses for WiMax spectrum.
Specifically, the governments DGT (Directorate General of Telecommunications) of the MOTC (Ministry of Transportation & Communications) plans to prohibit the selling of telephone numbers to WiMax operators, according to the Chinese Economic News Service. The move would protect the islands 3G operators, which the WiMax service would compete with.
The agency did not state, however, if or how it would be able to prevent the use of voice-enabled services, such as Skype, that do not require the use of a telephone number.
The SkypeOut service uses the VOIP technology to dial out to other numbers, and products such as the Actiontec Internet Phone Wizard allow a user to place a call through a wired or wireless phone out through the phone network. To date, however, no service exists that allows switched-network providers to make a call into the Skype network.