From: Pelle Braendgaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 17 Dec 2002 15:14:52 +0000
Subject: The true deal behind Panama's UDP Fiasco
http://talk.org/archives/000109.html#000109
The true deal behind Panama's UDP Fiasco
You hear the most interesting things over lunch in Panama, so I'll
report this more or less as I heard it.
It appears that I together with many other people were a bit to hasty to
come to conclusions about what happened around the Panamanian ban of UDP
ports for IP Telephony.
First of all while Cable & Wireless have a decidedly dodgy history in
this business, it apparently wasn't them that pushed for the ban.
The story is that in reality it was one of the new telecoms licensees,
TeleCarrier Inc. who made the complaint and pulled the strings. I'm not
100% sure that it was TeleCarrier as I'm just trying to get verification
of it, so take the name with a grain of salt.
Apparently this newish telecoms company, which is owned by one of the
most powerful families in Panama. These newcomers to the business, saw
the potential for loosing money and called their pals at the government
entity regulator, who decreed the resolution in October.
Cable & Wireless were apparently hurt by this as well, as they have
agreements with several voice over IP companies including Net2Phone. In
my article yesterday about C&W's results you can see how important the
IP business is to them. After January I think even more so when the
voice market is liberalised.
The second interesting thing I learnt about this yesterday was that when
the government realised how damaging this was to the reputation of
Panama, they were up in arms about it. I believe the head of the Ente
Regulador has been called in for questioning by the national assembly
and both sides of the assembly are united in being against the block.
What does this mean for the future? It's probably pretty safe to say
that the Supreme Courts suspension of the block will be upheld and we
wont see this again. It also hopefully means that the government will in
the future be a bit more careful about how innocent sounding local laws
and decrees can affect their reputation world wide.
--
Antilles Software Ventures SA http://neubia.com/asv
My Web Log Live and Direct from Panama http://talk.org
