Smuggling International Phone Calls
I didn’t realize Skype was illegal in Yemen. Previous reporting: 9/30/09, US owned VIOP smuggling phone calls. Arabic, SABA. The YObserver heavily redacted their original article, this is what’s left:
An international phone call trafficker was apprehended in his house in the south by the secretariat of the Criminal Investigative Department (CID). The detained, Ayman Ahmed al-Surmi, is being interrogated by the CID while the search for other suspects, including al-Surmi’s brother, continues…. The ease in using the Voice Over Internet Protocols (VoIP) tempted many local traffickers to cooperate with service providers outside Yemen to traffic calls. These outside providers traffic international phone calls through the internet without going through Yemen Telecommunication (TeleYemen) the local body responsible for regulating all international phone calls..International phone call trafficking goes through satellite connections or through broadband services, the traffickers receive it and then redistribute it through the local network by using local phone numbers (mobile and fixed phones) paying the tariff of local calls while receiving double this fee.
The VOIP technology is licensed in many countries but not permitted in Yemen and many other developing countries. These restrictions are in place to maintain the income of the national telecommunication companies, since the clearance revenue between countries came in advance of the developing countries.
TeleYemen experts estimate that this illegal trafficking annually costs the national revenue millions of US. Dollars. This is money intended for the Yemen Treasury.
