There is increasing talk these days about net neutrality. If you live in Belize you know what that means. Maybe you don’t know the term, but you certainly know its effects. Learn how to unblock VOIP in Belize.Have you tried making a call using Skype from Belize. Not working, right? This is because there is no net neutrality in Belize – a neutral net would be free of restrictions for all sites, content, and platforms. BTL, the internet service provider monopoly in Belize, is unapologetically against net neutrality, as evidenced by their current blocking of Vonage (SIP), IConnectThere (SIP), TomatoVine (SIP), SpeakEasy (SIP), Yahoo IM Voice (SIP), Gizmo Project (SIP), Skype (P2P), Google Talk (Jabber), and Asterisk IAX proves this without a doubt (source: Belize Free Internet Consortium). BTL’s actions are not only a nuisance to citizens, but are actually illegal in Belize according to the PUC, the body governing such action. With the blockade in place, Belize remains in the unsavory company of China, UAE of Oman, Panama, and Ethiopia in terms of freedom of communication. Rather than wait and hope for the GOB to finally get off their asses and do something, I would like to start conversation here about employable methods to bypass this fascist company.
Here is a list of the what appear to be the most promising methods of freeing Skype and other VOIP clients in Belize:
- Satellite Internets Providers (don’t use BTL!)
- Ultra Surf
- Hot Spot Shield
- FreeCap
- VPN (virtual private networks), unfortunately recent reports coming out of Belize are that BTL has started blocking these as well. So much for privacy.
Onion Router (a vpn, I have used this in conjunction with FreeCap before, but it is unreliable because of low BTL bandwidth.)
Learn more about this issue by reading an editorial on the BTL Blocking VOIP isse from the Reporter
Final Note: Unfortunately, these methods probably won’t work well because they rely on taking your traffic out of the BTL network. If you had a cable modem this would be easy enough, but BTL’s molasses service chokes these attempts for the most part. Part of the mission of this site is to bring information to the people of Belize; if you know of any reliable method to free VOIP in Belize please share it with our community by contributing a comment.
