Skype in Dubai – working today

As some of you might have noticed, my residence is in Dubai. A country where the government has an active protection policy towards Internet usage. That means that a lot of things are blocked, so you can't access them.

There are two telecoms companies here. Etisalat and DU. Both are partly owned by the government of Dubai. And each has different "content" blocks in place, protecting people from themselves. J

But that bad thing is – that both are blocking access to use Internet Phones now. Before only Etisalat was blocking access, but now both block by active packet inspection. That unfortunately means no access to VoIP without VPN (Virtual Private Network).

The protection is done to protect their phone revenues, since 70% of the population here are expats. So International phoning is a big revenue generator for them. (Some say as much as 80% of their income is from International Phone charges)

But the past couple of days, it actually seems like Skype 3.5.0.202 can get through perfectly without any problems. (On the DU network anyway)

One can only hope they are coming to their senses and are opening up for VoIP use. Unfortunately SIP is still blocked by them L