O2 Germany unblocks Rebtel

Just a fast news break: O2 in Germany is not blocking the phone numbers of Rebtel anymore. Their blog says "Victory! Rebtel is officially back in town and we’re planning on staying for a loooong time without any unexpected interruptions." I just heard the good news from my contacts and already did some Rebtel calls with a German SIM card from O2. Rebtel's CEO Hjalmar Winbladh is very happy that the pressure from thousands of Rebtel users made this breakthrough possible. He had had asked to write emails to the boss of O2 in Germany, Mr. Jaime Smith Basterra (jaime.smith@o2.com) or call the O2 support desk on 0049 179 55 22 2. Hjalmar told me in an email:

"We are very grateful for the overwhelming support we have received from our users. They proved that together we can make a difference. O2 would not have changed their mind without our users mailing, visiting and calling O2's CEO and customer support. Thank you all Rebtel friend! People can now stay in touch their loved ones again and afford to pay for it. We hope this has shown other operators that people do not accept being told who they can call and if they can use VOIP-services or not. We will continue to support our users and offer some of the world's lowest rates and best quality calling."

It cannot be overheard: Rebtel is happy, but they also send a message to incumbent telco operators to never try that again. Actually not only the Swedish company was affected. There are still more callthrough services and chatlines which see their numbers constrained by O2 and E-Plus in Germany. Their numbers are blocked or "limited", which is an especially nasty trick that user handytim explains in the web forum Telefon-Treff.de: "The numbers are not blocked, only limited. In my test I could only establish 1 connection out of 100 trials". While blocking of certain phone numbers is illegal for mobile operators, limiting seems to allowed to save their bandwith. One has to ask what's the difference to a blockade if really one of 100 calls comes through.

The affected companies are listed in a Google Spreadsheet which forum user Vesko keeps up to date: Budgetmobil, DialNow, Calleasy, voipwise.com, nonoh.net, VoipBusterPro, yipl.de, Chat House, Bluerate, Speed-Chat, partyknack.de, 030chat.de and Phonecaster. As you might notice there are several Betamax services among them. If the company wasn't so reluctant to talk to its users, Betamax could make a similar call for help.

German Mobile Network Operators are now definitely banning the use of VoIP

Vodafone and T-Mobile are now definitely banning the use of VoIP in their mobile networks in Germany. This had been long announced. Yet two years ago Vodafone Germany changed its Terms of Service (TOS) to reserve its right to block VoIP from the 8th of july 2007 on. But they weren't sure whether they would really do it. In february 2007 Vodafone Germany's speaker Heiko Witzke still told me that it was unclear whether or not Vodafone would really adopt the ban.

Now, since the deadline has passed, the German webzine Teltarif inquired and got a straight answer: It's forbidden to use Vodafone Germany's data plans for VoIP, says the press department. The other German mobile telephony providers, E-Plus, O2 and T-Mobile, have similar footnotes in their TOS. T-Mobile even forbids the use of instant messaging over GPRS and 3G. But none of the four companies seems to filter their data traffic for voice packets yet, maybe because this would slow down the entire network.

Crippling VoIP would be really annoying for a friend of mine who recently signed a Vodafone contract to use 3G instead of DSL on his laptop. He doesn't know much about technology but loves to use Skype. With Vodafone's HSDPA and HSUPA 3G he enjoys download speeds of 3,6 Mbps and uploads at 1,45 Mbps in the whole city of Berlin, which makes him quite happy. Vodafone charges him 45 Euros monthly but someone should tell him that he is violating the TOS. I am sure that he would directly cancel his contract.

He had weird problems anyway. The service, Vodafone Mobile Connect, doesn't run on Windows Vista. But as a newbie he has a brandnew laptop with Microsoft's latest OS. We installed everything from CD as told. But it did not work and so we went to a Vodafone shop for a reinstallation. The clerk was quite friendly and invested one hour of his valuable time for a reinstallation, but all in vain. Then we went home and downloaded the latest Vodafone Mobile Connect software from the website and did all possible firmware updates. Still no success, although the Vodafone website tells that the latest software should work with Vista.

Luckily we found this solution which tells how to use the Vodafone 3G PCMCIA card as if it was a normal network adapter. This works great. My friend could uninstall the crappy Vodafone software entirely and is now happily surfing the internet.