Previous Politech messages: "Panama requires ISPs to block Internet telephony" http://www.politechbot.com/p-04131.html "Reply to Panama requires ISPs to block Internet telephony" http://www.politechbot.com/p-04135.html See also a note from Steve Langasek below. -Declan --- From: "Christian Renaud" <crenaudat_private> To: <declanat_private> Subject: Detail on Panama Regulatory Environment (RE: Reply to Panama requires ISPs to block Internet telephony) Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 15:00:26 -0800 Declan, Some time ago, when we (Cisco) were first entering the VoIP business, we had a consultant provide us with an analysis of international regulatory environments for using VoIP for 'Toll-Bypass' applications (generally, PBX to PBX over Private IP networks). The data below for Panama is particularly relevant in this case, albeit dated ('98). I am certain one of your readers has a more current understanding, however the first paragraph is still relevant. Regards, C PANAMA Overview of Regulatory Framework Currently, the Basic Telephone Service Carrier -Cable & Wireless (C&W)- has an exclusive concession for the exploitation of the following services until January 1, 2003: Service No.101 - Local basic telecommunications service. Service No.102 - National basic telecommunications service. Service No.103 - International basic telecommunications service. Service No.104 - Service of public and semi-public terminals. Service No.105 - Lease of dedicated voice circuits service. Local, national and international voice transmission services may only be rendered by C&W until the year 2003, regardless of whether the voice transmission takes place via the Internet, satellite link or leased lines. The Panamanian telecommunications licensing system is based on services and not on infrastructure. Although perhaps not relevant for purposes of this memorandum, you should know that the re-sale of telecommunications services is allowed under Panamanian law, but requires a re-sale license and a re-sale agreement with the service provider. Based on the above, we believe that the transmission of voice through the internet would directly violate C&W's exclusive rights. This is the stated criteria of the Regulating Entity and C&W, although they realize that for obvious reasons it is difficult to keep track of the violators. 1.1 As indicated above, in general, the local, national and international transmission of voice is currently a monopoly held by C&W and thus, the provision of voice transmission services by an SP through the internet would not be allowed.Very few exceptions are applicable, such as the Digital Corporate International Service (Service 206), which allows for international voice transmission provided that the corporate facility is not connected in any of the two ends with a local PSTN. When C&W's monopoly expires in the year 2003 it will be possible for other companies to render voice transmission services generally, in competition. Such companies will have to obtain a Type B concession from the Regulating Entity to that effect. 1.2 Although not specifically regulated, it can be argued that the transmission of voice among the users of a corporate intranet which is not connected to a PSTN nor to the internet may be permitted and would not require a concession, since it would be similar to the transmission of voice within departments of a corporation by way of extension lines (which do not require the use of the PSTN). This scenario, however, would require that the intranet is strictly used to communicate the members of the corporation (employees, management). We have confirmed this criteria on a no-name basis with Engineer Troitino of the Regulating Entity. However, given the lack of clarity in the law we recommend that a formal request for confirmation that this type of system is viable be filed with the Regulating Entity when the client decides to sell the equipment or render services in Panama. This is particularly important given the fact that the Regulating Entity is in the process of formally regulating the use of certain internet-related telecommunications equipment, and it is difficult to ascertain whether in the new regulations the sale or use of voice transmission equipment would be restricted or not. If the intranet is connected to a PSTN or to the internet and the provision of voice transmission services would include termination of traffic at any network termination point of the PSTN, the service would not be permitted in view of C&W's monopoly. 1.3. The provision of voice transmission services would not be permitted in view of C&W?s monopoly. 1.4. As indicated above, in the year 2003, when the monopoly held by C&W expires, third parties may apply for Type B concessions to render local, national and international telecommunications services. Currently, the applications for Type B concessions must contain at least the following: . Identification of the petitioner and a description of its organization, which shall include the identity of shareholders holding more than 10% of the shares of the corporation. . List of all other telecommunications services rendered by the petitioner or by the shareholders owning more than 10% of the shares of the corporation. . Description of the service which is being applied for and the means by which the petitioner proposes to render it. . Geographical areas requested for the concession. . Sworn statement as to the imposition of fines for anti-competitive acts carried out in the last two years by the petitioner or the shareholders owning more than 10% of the shares of the petitioner. . Sworn statement by petitioner as to compliance with all legal and technical requirements needed to become a Type B concessionaire. Upon review of the documentation submitted with the petition, provided that all legal requirements are met, a type B concession should be granted in 30 business days (except those which require the use of the radioelectric spectrum). When the concession to be granted refers to a service which requires the use of frequencies, the RE shall grant the use of such frequencies together with the concession. The authorization for the use of frequencies is subject to a different procedure before the RE. In addition to the concessions referred above, telecommunications carriers or service providers need to obtain a type A commercial (business) license before the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. 1.5. The by-passing of long-distance fees would constitute a violation of C&W's exclusivity rights and may result in the imposition of fines by the Regulating Entity which would range between US$1,000.00 and US$1,000,000.00, without prejudice to any civil claims that may be brought by C&W against the violator. Also, depending on the case, the Regulating Entity could impose daily fines of up to US$10,000.00. 2.1. Currently there are no provisions charging the manufacturer with liability arising out of the provision of services by third parties with the manufactured equipment. However, we have learned informally that the Regulating Entity is in the process of approving new regulations referring particularly to the use of internet in the rendering of telecommunications services. The Regulating Entity strongly opposes to the sale of equipment which would allow for the transmission of voice through the internet, and most likely the new regulations will show this position. =========================================================== Christian Renaud v/ 408-527-1199 Sr. Manager, Business Development New Markets and Technologies Cisco Systems crenaudat_private "Irrationality is the square root of all evil."- Hofstadter ============================================================ --- Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2002 16:19:58 -0600 From: Steve Langasek <vorlonat_private> To: Declan McCullagh <declanat_private> Subject: Re: FC: Panama requires ISPs to block Internet telephony Hi Declan, Please let your readers know that the article posted regarding Panama's blocking of UDP ports contains factual inaccuracies. The article claims: > Among the services that employ some of those ports are "nlockmgr," the NFS > lock manager responsible for rpc.statd and rpc.lockd, which in turn are > responsible for crash recovery functions for locked files and for processing > file locking requests, respectively; telnet; and numerous VoIP services. The telnet protocol does not require *any* udp ports at all to function; if there are telnet variants that use fixed udp ports, they strike me as incredibly broken in their own right. The telnet protocol has used *tcp* port 23 for the term of its existence. Also, while it's true that some NFS locking daemons use the statically-assigned 1024/udp port, to my knowledge this is only true of older, partial NFS implementations: the preferred handling of all NFS services uses the RPC "portmapper" service to dynamically map other NFS services onto whatever ports happen to be available. I don't know of any locking daemons that use 1024/udp which work well enough to continue using anyway. The new Panamanian law is a tragedy for on-line freedom, and a gross misapplication of government power for private gain; it's an icon of all that is wrong with global corporatism today. There's no need to resort to half-truths to bolster the argument against this law. Indeed, the reality is that the number of protocols affected here is far GREATER than this article would lead us to believe: because all of the ports blocked by the law are in the range of unassigned "high ports" reserved for dynamic allocation, *all udp protocols* are subject to interruption of service by these holes in the Internet that Panama is attempting to legislate. This includes not just VoIP applications, but also other forms of streaming audio and streaming video used for broadcasting of content; infrastructure protocols such as ntp (clock synchronization) and Kerberos (enterprise security); and even DNS, without which no websites at all can be found by name! UDP is stateless by design, making it impossible for a router to distinguish between a client and a server, and the Panamanian decree does not say "block all udp packets whose source and destination port are both on this list", it says "block these ports". This is sufficiently broad that creating such holes in the range of allowed udp ports imposes a burden on *everyone* exchanging IP traffic with Panama to manually exclude these ports from the pool that *all Internet software draws from*. This would almost universally require a vendor update to the operating system of every Internet-connected machine, anywhere, that would send traffic to or through Panama -- every PC, every server, every corporate firewall! > Update: A call has been issued for proxies that can be used for VoIP, > preferably more important, less-easily blocked ports. Anyone with knowledge > of this may contact us here and we'll see that your message gets through. In light of the above, I don't think it would be possible for a law to be any more disruptive of the smooth exchange of "legitimate" traffic on the Internet than this one already promises to be. I think the Panamanian government will soon come to appreciate the true depth of their folly. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. 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