Gen. Bell has sent out the negotiation results for service members using companies like Vonage. Starting 1 June 2007 if you don't already have VoIP you will be required to use a legal Korean registered company. The Korean companies are going to charge a comparable rate to US companies and you will be able to get the legal registered equipment through AAFES. If you already have a VoIP service before June 7 you will be grandfathered in and allowed to keep what you have. The announcement doesn't say how they will know if you already have a US service. Does anyone know how they will grandfather people in?

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Does anyone know how this affects expats with NO USFK affliation? What would we do and would we be grandfathered in as well?

Gen. Bell just wrote an article that was on the front page of the Morning Calm. He made specific reference that the the negotiation was for USFK civilians, service members and families. He said that it was "good faith" agreement. I took that to mean that they weren't going to block any VoIP as long as USFK ensures that new soldiers use Korean companies. I don't see how they can separate USFK VoIP users from other expat users who live off base.

What kind of phone number are you going to recieve by using the Korean companies ?? Has anyone started using the AAFES set up yet ??

At a town hall meeting I went to, an AAFES manager explained to us that it will be a local Korean number.

Lotta good that does you.

The beauty of it all is that you can have a 'local' US phone number while living in Korea.

I really don't see how Korean companies can enforce the restriction on using Vonage. It sounds to me like a face saving type agreement - and at the same time they hope that they've pulled the wool over the eyes of would be Vonage subscribers and tricked them into getting local Korean VoIP service.

They say that you are OK if you already had Vonage before the deadline but how do they know that you already had it. They don't.

I would guess that they have been logging VOIP usage, and that is how they will know who is grandfathered. I have Vonage, and I see no possible way for them to block it unless they just block all access to that domain across all ports, but then there is no way to grandfather anyone.

I was also thinking that if you live in the barracks and someone sees that you have a non Korean VoIP and they know you moved here after the deadline then you can get into some type of trouble. Maybe during the room inspections that they do.

I doubt anyone doing an inspection would give a crap about your telephone service unless they were ordered to look for it.