According to news reports, China has put a stop to VoIP telephony to protect its domestic telecom companies. Over the next few years, no commercial service sites on the internet offering telephony between computers and telephones would be approved.
Internet telephony provider Skype had been planning to offer such services in China, but had failed to obtain a licence. In mid2005 China’s Ministry of Information Industry had granted regional VoIP licences to China Telecom and Chinanet for test purposes, while imposing a number of stringent conditions. The tests of these Chinese telecom service providers are to come to an end in April.
