UAE VOIP VPN Block Update

One of VOIP Guide reader shares his experience on using VOIP in UAE and his findings on using VOIP over VPN. You can participate in this discussion to help each other out to get VOIP back in UAE. This post complements the discussion regarding Etislat blocking VOIP in UAE

An anonymous reader from UAE today shared with us his experience on using VOIP in UAE and the issues he is facing while using VPN based VOIP.

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I am writing this post to give you all comprehensive information about VOIP usage in UAE.

I used VOIP in UAE for a long time, till the day of 24th April or 25th April 2009, when one fine day, suddenly my VOIP client stopped connecting and I was unable to make VOIP calls anymore.

A little bit of inquiry and research revealed and I got to know that the ISP - Etislat had blocked most of the VOIP clients.

There is a very popular company, which was operating freely in UAE by the name of BetaMax. It provides popular VOIP clients such as FreeCall, SmartVOIP, BudgetSIP, JustVOIP, InterVOIP etc. All of these VOIP clients had different rates and different designs but all of them belong to the same company Betamax. So, the ISP - E T I S A L A T put a full block on BetaMax and all these clients stopped working.

Some days passed and I tried to use the client using Hotspotshield and Ultrasurf but the voice quality was not good and people in my Home country, where I used to call, complained very often that the voice was cracking and often it would get disconnected.

Then after doing a little bit of more research, I came to know that I could try using a VPN connection to make VOIP calls. I then used VPN connection from two different VPN companies but the result was the same... although I would be able to login and connect and even make calls but while I was able to hear the voice of the other party very clearly, my voice would not travel to them clearly and it would crack a lot.

This could also be because while uploading information on VPN, the ISP - E T I S A L A T has de-prioritised traffic and they deliberately cause data-packet-loss, which results in cracking of voice (may be, I am not sure here).

But the end result is that even using VPN, the voice is not travelling without cracking...

I have also heard about three people getting fined by Etisalat. A person in my own office was fined AED 2,500 for using VOIP. It is indeed true that E T I S A L A T is cracking in on users, who are making VOIP calls. So, you would have to be extremely careful or pay penalties to E T I S A L A T.

I am now trying to see if there are any alternatives to this and if yes, I would post.

Thanks to our reader from UAE to share this story with us. I just want to invite every single VOIP guide from UAE Region to get together and find a solution to overcome this block and report real stories about this ban. I believe a lot of rumours have been floating around for a while but the real stuff is hidden.