Everyone's Talking Skype in China
BEIJING -- Count Liu Xiaobing among Skype's biggest fans.
The chief information officer at Shineway Group, a Chinese state-owned meat-processing company, has been signed up with the Internet phone service since shortly after it was launched in late 2003. He uses a free Skype service to keep in touch with family members overseas, while executives at his 40,000-plus employee company use another Skype offering to communicate between regional offices inside and outside China at a fraction of regular calling costs.
"Whenever a friend calls, the first thing I ask is if I can call them back on Skype," says Mr. Liu.
Mr. Liu is one of a large and growing number of Chinese who have flocked to Skype, which was purchased by eBay Inc. last year, and other Internet telephone services. Roughly one in eight of Skype's more than 75 million registered users are now in China.
That popularity is noteworthy because in China, Skype operates in a regulatory gray area. The free part of Skype's service, which lets people use personal computers to call or establish video links with other PCs, is permitted to operate without restriction by China's Ministry of Information Industry. But Skype's fee-based service called SkypeOut, which enables calls from PCs to regular phone handsets, is officially off limits in China.
Most Chinese users, like Mr. Liu, use Skype for its cost savings. A call to Toronto, where Shineway has an office, costs him about two U.S. cents a minute, Mr. Liu says, compared with the cost of normal long-distance service of about 45 cents a minute. Some also prefer it because conversations carried on Skype are encrypted, which they believe prevents calls from being monitored by Chinese authorities.
Skype's widespread use in China, in all its forms, underlines how new technology that enables easy communication and information flow is frequently outpacing the ability of China's regulators to react. "The regulation has fallen behind the technology's development" in China, says Fang Meiqin, an analyst at BDA China, a Beijing-based telecommunications consulting company.
In China, regulatory decision making can be especially slow, analysts say, because of a consensus-driven bureaucracy that tends to be wary of new technologies. The situation is compounded in the case of Skype, analysts say, by the fact that the Ministry of Information Industry is closely aligned with China's government-owned fixed-line phone companies -- China Telecommunications Corp. and China Network Communications Group Corp., or Netcom. Analysts say the information ministry fears PC-to-phone service could hurt the core businesses of those carriers.
"MII wants to restrict this service [because] they want to protect China Telecom and China Netcom," says Jeffery Wang of Analysys International, a Beijing-based technology research company.
Wang Lijian, a spokesman for the MII, said the ministry isn't trying to shield government carriers. "Any sort of new service needs to go through [testing]...before formally launching it around the country, so that we could ensure all conceivable problems have been solved in the testing process," Mr. Wang says.
China's government carriers already offer some other Internet-based phone services priced more cheaply than traditional service -- but not as low as SkypeOut. Currently, the Chinese carriers are only testing low-cost PC-to-phone type services in four cities. (Internet calling giant Vonage Holdings Corp. of the U.S. doesn't offer service in China.)
Skype, headquartered in Luxembourg, began offering its PC-to-PC service in China in late 2004 in conjunction with TOM Online Inc., a Chinese Internet company. The co-branded TOM-Skype service already had about 3.4 million registered users when the two companies formed a joint venture in September to strengthen their cooperation. By the end of February, that number had nearly tripled to more than nine million, according to TOM, making China Skype's second-biggest market after the U.S.
Mr. Wang of Analysys says he doesn't think SkypeOut will be approved in China until at least 2008. Skype and TOM have been negotiating to offer the PC-to-phone service through Chinese operators in China, but have yet to reach a deal. "It takes some time to build relationships," Michael Jackson, Skype's director of operations, said in an emailed response to questions. "But we believe that we are making significant progress, and in a way that complies with local regulations and customs."
Mr. Jackson says Skype doesn't encourage Chinese to use SkypeOut, and doesn't offer local payment methods. Still, many Chinese are finding ways to use the service. In September, a local subsidiary of China Telecom in the southern city of Shenzhen began trying to block the use of SkypeOut, according to statements by employees of the subsidiary at the time. How that situation has been resolved is unclear. Mr. Jackson says Skype "did not see any evidence of being blocked in this city." A China Telecom spokesman said in an email only that current Chinese regulations prohibit PC-to-phone service, except for the trials it and China Netcom are running.
As the regulatory jockeying continues, Mr. Liu, the chief information officer, remains a diehard Skype user. "I'm online 24 hours a day," he says during an interview interrupted by a Skype call.
Mr. Liu says he has trouble using SkypeOut only in Shenzhen. He says his Internet connection is closed when he tries to use the service there, a fact that infuriates him. "You can't shut people off" from the technology, he says. "It's not reasonable."
Skype挑战中国监管体系
刘小兵是Skype的狂热爱好者。
身为中国国有肉类加工企业双汇集团(Shineway Group)的首席信息长的刘小兵自2003年底这种网络电话推出后不久就注册了。他用免费的Skype服务同海外的亲属联系，而拥有4万多名员工的双汇集团的管理人员则用另一种Skype产品以普通电话成本几分之一的价格在国内外的地区办事处间联系。
刘小兵说，每当朋友打电话时，我问的第一件事就是我能不能用Skype打回去。
刘小兵是中国不断增多的使用Skype和其它互联网电话服务的人群中的一员。Skype目前的7,500多万注册用户中约有八分之一来自中国。Skype去年被eBay Inc.收至旗下。
这样的发展速度值得关注，因为在中国，Skype是在监管的灰色地带中生存。Skype的免费服务部分──可以让人们通过个人电脑呼叫其它电脑或建立视频连接──不受中国信息产业部(Ministry of Information Industry)的限制，允许正常运营。但Skype的收费服务SkypeOut──可以用电脑与普通电话通话──是官方禁止的做法。
同刘小兵一样，大多数中国用户使用Skype的目的是为节约成本。刘小兵说，打电话到双汇在多伦多的办事处约为每分钟两美分，而打普通的国际长途电话则为45美分左右。还有一些人喜欢它的原因在于Skype的通话能够被加密，这样通话就不会被中国政府监控。
Skype在中国的大规模使用显示出使通讯和信息交流更加方便的新技术频频超过中国监管机构的反应能力。北京电信业咨询公司BDA China的分析师方美芹（音）说，中国的监管已经落后于技术的发展。
分析师说，中国的监管决策过程相当缓慢，原因是对新技术高度警惕的政府机构。分析师说，这种情况在Skype的个案中也很突出，中国信息产业部显然同国有固话运营商──中国电信(China Telecommunications Corporation)和中国网通(China Network Communications Group Corp.)站在了一起。分析师称，中国信息产业部担心电脑-电话服务可能损害这些运营商的核心业务。
北京科技业研究公司易观国际(Analysys International)的分析师王长春(Jeffery Wang)说，信息产业部希望限制Skype，以保护中国电信和中国网通。
信息产业部新闻发言人王立健表示，信息产业部并不想保护政府的运营商。任何一种新服务在正式推向全国前都需要经过测试，这样就能保证所有潜在问题在测试过程中得到解决。
中国的国有运营商也推出了一些基于互联网的电话服务，价格要远远低于传统的服务，但仍高于SkypeOut的价格。目前，这些中国运营商仅在四个城市测试低成本的电脑-电话服务。（美国互联网通话巨头Vonage Holdings Corp.未在中国提供服务。）
Skype的总部位于卢森堡，该公司从2004年底开始同中国互联网企业TOM在线(Tom Online Inc.)合作在华推出了电脑-电脑的通话服务。在两家公司2005年9月决定成立合资企业加强合作时，这项使用TOM-Skype品牌的服务已拥有340万注册用户。TOM在线的数据显示，到今年2月底，注册用户数量已经增长近两倍，达到900多万，使中国成为仅次于美国的Skype第二大市场。
易观国际的王长春说，他认为至少在2008年之前中国不会批准SkypeOut。Skype和TOM在线一直在协商通过中国运营商推出电脑-电话服务，但尚未达成协议。Skype的运营主管迈克尔?杰克逊(Michael Jackson)在回答记者提问的电子邮件中表示，建立关系需要一些时间。不过相信我们正在遵守当地监管规定和习惯的情况下取得明显的进展。
杰克逊说，Skype并不鼓励中国人使用SkypeOut，也未在当地提供支付手段。不过仍有许多人找到了使用这种服务的办法。去年9月份，中国电信深圳子公司曾试图禁止使用SkypeOut，这是当时该公司的员工透露的。这种情况最终是如何解决的尚不清楚。杰克逊称，并未看到Skype在深圳被封杀的证据。中国电信的发言人在电子邮件中表示，除了中国电信和中国网通目前的试运行之外，当前中国的法规禁止电脑-电话的服务。
尽管存在监管方面的限制，刘小兵仍是忠实的Skype用户。他说：“我全天24小时在线，”对他的采访也常被Skype电话所打断。
刘小兵称，他只在深圳使用SkypeOut时遇到过麻烦。他说，当他试图连线通话时，他的互联网连接被关闭了，这让他非常不满。刘小兵说，不能封杀这项技术，这种做法毫无道理。
