My vonage is under $30 a month unlimited, SSRT's $10 for there service is not including what they charge for me to call the U.S., calling cards are much cheaper than SSRT ever thought about.

If SSRT just charged me $10 for unlimited minutes to the states then vonage would never had a chance over here.

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CH-47 SI

They must find it difficult...

Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority. --Gerald Massey

Ok Never had phone in Barracks when I was in so this may be a dumb question but is the SSRT a local number for Korea? As my sone is getting his DSL installed today at Camp Carroll I would be interested to know so my sister in law can call him from Seoul. Thanks in advance for educating the old guy.

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Just my humble opinion!

Its a DSN number is it not?

she'll be able to call him though they have ways, how ever your Son should just get a cell phone there really cheap in korea, atleast i think so, i just add $10 a month and its there when i need it , half the time i'll end up with 40000-W- on my cellphone

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OK, here's the scoop: Dacom, the owners of the data pipelines within Korea, petitioned the governement to make non-Korean voip providers illegal in the ROK. Well, it's been illegal for a while but apparantly SSRT is on our side of the issue since thousands of their customers will be affected by the blockage. It's not under SSRT's control to say whether or not we will be blocked, it will be blocked above their level at Dacom apparantly. Unless I'm mistaken and Dacom is mandating that ISPs block voip on Dacom's behalf. But below is the email that a person in my squadron recieved as well as the letter from Dacom to the voip providers asking them to make their service legal in ROK my registering. So, we will lose VOIP service whether we like it or not pretty soon. Even though Vonage has registered at several other non-US countries, I'm not sure if South Korea is on their list.

*************************************
From SSRT To Customers:
To Whom It May Concern,

Dacom has requested that SSRT notify USFK about the following information regarding the blockage of unlawful VoIP service. Dacom has officially declared that all unlawful VoIP traffic will be blocked from all Dacom's network on July 1st, 2006 at 00:00am.

Due to that the VoIP services such as ' Vonage ,' 'Lingo,' 'AT&T,' and other companies are not legally authorized to provide telecommunication services in Korea and are illegally providing VoIP services using major ISP carrier’s facilities, they have been declared illegal by the Korean Government.(Laws & Rules for Telecommunications No. 33” and the “Laws & Rules for Telecommunications No. 4-3, 12, 19, 59-1, 32~2). Henceforth, any unlawful VoIP service (including Vonage , Lingo, AT&T, and etc ) that have not been authorized by the Korean Government will be terminated by other major ISP carriers in Korea as well.

Since SSRT is well aware of the large number of subscribers of the above services in the USFK installations, SSRT requested the ISP carriers to postpone the blocking of unlawful VoIP service provider several times since last year. VoIP service was declared illegal since August last year in Korea. It became authorized for usage on October last year when the Korean Government registered the VoIP service. But many of the VoIP providing companies are not registered in Korea and the ISP carriers who believe that it's taking a negative impact on their business have decided to terminated those services.

Despite SSRT's numerous attempts to request the ISP carriers and the Korean Government to delay the blocking of unauthorized VoIP services, a notice about the blockage of unlawful VoIP service to be performed on July 1st, 2006 was carried out on Thursday, June 22nd. We are still in the process of delaying the 'blockage' and would like to make it clear that SSRT has no intention to block the VoIP services. Not only will the blockage of unlawful VoIP services hurt our business but we also realize that this will cause inconvenience to a lot of our customers as well.

The blockage of unlawful VoIP services is not only related to the USFK installations but to nationwide VoIP customers. And we would like to acknowledge the fact that the blockage of unlawful VoIP services is neither in any event related nor relevant to SSRT Co, Ltd. It’s being carried out by the Korean Government and the ISP carriers.

Meanwhile, SSRT is coming up with plans to eliminate the inconvenience and damages to the related customers in time of the blockage of unlawful VoIP services. We would like to recommend to the customers who have any of the unlawful VoIP services to contact the those VoIP service provider and request them to register for a legal authorizations from the Korean Government. If this will be troublesome, we suggest that you change your service to a legally authorized VoIP service. SSRT is more than happy to assist you in finding a lawful VoIP provider. Please, feel free to visit any SSRT Telecommunication/Mobile Center for further assistance in this.

Please refer to the following attachment: "Dacom’s Memorandum Regarding the Blockage of Unlawful VoIP Services" for further information.




Date : June 22, 2006


To : AAFES, Vonage, Lingo, AT&T



From :

Carrier Account Team
DACOM Corporation, Seoul
Tel : +82 2 2089 5439
Fax : +82 2 2089 0746

Subject : The Official notice of the stoppage of unlawful VoIP services


This is an official notice stating the unlawful sales of VoIP services and the stoppage of all illegal VoIP traffic on Dacom network.

The following are the grounds of the illegal activities of the unlawful VoIP companies, Vonage, Lingo, AT&T and etc. These companies are not registered to provide telecommunication services in Korea nor can they provide VoIP services using Dacom facilities. Please refer to articles 19, 32-2, 34, 36, 65, and 70 of the Korean Telecommunication Business Act for the legal basis.

We have confirmed that KT (Korea Telecom) and Hanaro Telecom, Korea’s major telecommunication companies, has stated that Vonage, Lingos and AT&T’s VoIP services are illegal in Korea.

In accordance to the above statement Dacom is not responsible for any unlawful VoIP traffic. Thus we are planning to discontinue all unlawful VoIP services on Dacom’s network. Dacom has sent an official document to Vonage Holding Corporation, Primus Telecommunications Lingo and AT&T Callvantage informing them of their illegal services and requesting legalization of their service.

Below is the schedule for the blocking of unlawful VoIP services :
l July 1, 2006 00:00 : All unlawful VoIP traffic blocked from all Dacom’s network

Dacom is not responsible for any losses associated with the cancellation of unlawful VoIP services. We are doing our very best to provide quality service. Thank you in advance for your continued support and cooperation.

Some stuff has been going around base via big wigs and it looks like they will be blocking VOIP. It may only be at Osan for now, but those affected are pushing for a boycott, myself included. I use Skype and that is the only reason I have internet in my room. I can surf the web at work or the library! Anyway, mass participation will be the only way to beat this, they are even suggesting having family members affected contact their congressmen. Viva la revolution...

This sounds like a scare tactic to me.

How are they going to monitor and block this service? By monitoring your bandwidth usage and claiming you are using VOIP if you are using a specified amount of bandwidth?

They damn sure aren't going to come into your home and check to see if you have a router sold by Vonage...

Ok so the deal with VOIP services ban is this ssrt customers only on base or other carriers off base? Since there is a vonage store outside osan maingate that sells korean VOIP numbers and routers how can they single out american vonage lines? Might I add I feel really welcome by the korean gov't here now LOL. If they dont care about military here then maybe we need to go home or protest the gov't some how!!!!!!!!!!!

My take on the situation...

Traditionally, telephone service in most countries were (still are in some places) run by by big monopolies. Everyone remembers Ma Bell - same thing in the good ol' USofA. Except in a lot of countries, the large monopolies are very closely tied with the gov't - to the point where they actually overlap in many ways and it's not unusual for a guy to go from being the minister of communications to the CEO of the big telecom.

Hence, these telecommunication companies wield a lot of powerful and have a great deal of influence within the gov't. If they feel that someone is pinching in on their profits, rather than fight the competition with better service/products - they fight back by getting the competition eliminated - usually through some sort of gov't intervention.

I'm with willy on this one. How can you tell what you are using your bandwith for? vonage, has a setting for "low" bandwidth usage.

I'm not a computer person when it comes to stuff like this, but I would find it hard to believe they could actually tell if you have vonage or not? I could be wrong.

Any "indepth" computer people want to answer that?

Oh and brie, i don't think the Korean Government are happy with the military. Check out the front page of stars and stripes.....not looking good.....but that is a different thread all in all....

__________________
CH-47 SI

They must find it difficult...

Those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority. --Gerald Massey

Im not familiar with what it says in the stars and stripes please fill me in. Also I do know that they economy around these bases especially osan thrive on military spending hence the FAKE designer bags, jerseys, suits and the ChIcKen On a SticK. Well come on stop buying. We can buy everything that we NEED at the commisary and BX right. If the goverment is that pissy lets do them a favor and get outta there hair. Go home and use our vonage.