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Lebanon plans to charge for WhatsApp calls

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They scrapped the plans hours later amid clashes between security forces and protester.   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-50095448?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology&link_location=live-reporting-story

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As part of the efforts to raise revenues in the country's 2020 draft budget, the Lebanese government will start charging for VoIP 0.20 USD per day. This charge will be effective by 01/01/2020. 

The country is in a state of economic crisis and this decision was approved because the fee could potentially bring up to 250 million USD in annual revenues.

"The country has only two service providers, both state-owned, and some of the most costly mobile rates in the region."

 

I wonder how this is going to work in a world where VPNs are a thing..

 

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-economy-calls-idUSKBN1WW1ZA

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/lebanon-plans-charge-whatsapp-calls-140931579.html

 

 

UPDATE: People are demanding the government to risen and the whole country is rioting.

 

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I wonder how they can differentiate regular data and a voip data since whatsapp uses end to end encryption.

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Hard to charge when nobody has money.

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3 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

I wonder how they can differentiate regular data and a voip data since whatsapp uses end to end encryption.

Oops they slipped - they have the keys already apparently :/

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4 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

I wonder how they can differentiate regular data and a voip data since whatsapp uses end to end encryption.

They can always just charge the fee to everybody, regardless of whether or not they use Whatsapp.

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1 minute ago, TetraSky said:

They can always just charge the fee to everybody, regardless of whether or not they use Whatsapp.

Once the bureaucrats figure that out, that's exactly what they'll do. That and/or demand WhatsApp hand over the keys that they don't have, and then it'll be banned in the country.

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22 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

They can always just charge the fee to everybody, regardless of whether or not they use Whatsapp.

They already do.. There is plan for 4USD that includes whatsapp data 200mb only.

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30 minutes ago, e_shocksh said:

They already do.. There is plan for 4USD that includes whatsapp data 200mb only.

200mb?? is that 2003? haha

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1 minute ago, SupaKomputa said:

200mb?? is that 2003? haha

As said it's only counting Whatsapp traffic.

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Interesting.. VoIP apps are blocked in my country (whatsapp messaging works, but calling doesn't) I have a feeling they'll try to monetize it too when Lebanon does it..

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1 hour ago, e_shocksh said:

I wonder how this is going to work in a world where VPNs are a thing..

They typically block VPNs, at least all the popular ones. 

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22 hours ago, lewdicrous said:

Interesting.. VoIP apps are blocked in my country (whatsapp messaging works, but calling doesn't) I have a feeling they'll try to monetize it too when Lebanon does it..

 

22 hours ago, Kilrah said:

They typically block VPNs, at least all the popular ones. 

What about Telegram?

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1 minute ago, Likwid said:

What about Telegram?

The problem is getting friends and family to switch from WhatsApp, an app that they've used for years.

Haven't personally tried it, so I don't know if they blocked that too or not.

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On 10/17/2019 at 6:32 PM, SupaKomputa said:

I wonder how they can differentiate regular data and a voip data since whatsapp uses end to end encryption.

Layer 7 traffic shaping. Even if traffic is encrypted, you can recognize the traffic to belong to certain service. Meaning you can know it's WhatsApp traffic, but you don't know what the actual traffic is (because it's encrypted).

 

Also this policy is garbage. Whole point of internet traffic is that it shouldn't be shaped, throttled or monetized/taxed based on content. Only ones who do this are garbage free loaders who want to feed on someone else's service or work literally because why not.

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31 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Layer 7 traffic shaping. Even if traffic is encrypted, you can recognize the traffic to belong to certain service. Meaning you can know it's WhatsApp traffic, but you don't know what the actual traffic is (because it's encrypted).

 

Also this policy is garbage. Whole point of internet traffic is that it shouldn't be shaped, throttled or monetized/taxed based on content. Only ones who do this are garbage free loaders who want to feed on someone else's service or work literally because why not.

I know you can recognize which service it was on. The problem is can you split between VOIP call and text inside the encapsulated encryption without a key.

 

I understands why they put this tariffs, network providers are loosing millions from people abandoning the voice and text. Nobody need to have a long distance calls, whatsapp calls are replacing them. People no longer pay for voice / text, only buy data nowadays. I have 300free minutes from my provider a month, i only use them like 1-2 minutes. If the companies don't make money, the government don't get it's tax.

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From a tech perspective, in a perfect world it would be impossible to achieve this, so I can only imagine this will be done either by exploiting flaws in the system that shouldn't exist, or by getting their fingers into places they shouldn't be.  For example, forcing the devs to change/add something to the app to allow for this control, or banning it from the country.  I suspect any country that would do this also bans VPNs already so they've got that "covered".  As for just switching to another app, if people are already rioting then clearly they've got the willpower to handle such a "strenuous and difficult challenge" as switching to telegram, so that's not likely it.  If that was too hard for them, they wouldn't be rioting.  They probably wouldn't even be using apps in the first place.  I assume the real story is just already blocked all the other apps, or will be bringing this change to them soon.  In regards to telegram, we can be fairly confident that given the ultimatum I suspected above, they will choose to just leave the country.  They've done it before with much larger markets.

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2 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

I know you can recognize which service it was on. The problem is can you split between VOIP call and text inside the encapsulated encryption without a key.

 

I understands why they put this tariffs, network providers are loosing millions from people abandoning the voice and text. Nobody need to have a long distance calls, whatsapp calls are replacing them. People no longer pay for voice / text, only buy data nowadays. I have 300free minutes from my provider a month, i only use them like 1-2 minutes. If the companies don't make money, the government don't get it's tax.

Data rate. Call will have a relatively larger continuous stream of data, texts are small with gaps of no data or minimal data. That's my first guess.

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5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Data rate. Call will have a relatively larger continuous stream of data, texts are small with gaps of no data or minimal data. That's my first guess.

I see, that make sense.

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They don't need to look at traffic in any way other than the desrtination server IPs. Just blacklist all of the service's endpoints.

Same as they do for VPN, they don't block VPN per se, they just blacklist all the common services.

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It's ridiculous that more people aren't using Signal when it's opensource and got endorsements from various security conscientious people.

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On 10/18/2019 at 5:32 AM, SupaKomputa said:

I wonder how they can differentiate regular data and a voip data since whatsapp uses end to end encryption.

they just monitor your phones traffic like any other provider

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5 hours ago, Beskamir said:

It's ridiculous that more people aren't using Signal when it's opensource and got endorsements from various security conscientious people.

I've been in places where that's blocked too.

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when a country is in that much financial trouble that they are looking to tax services like this over $250M lost revenue then there are bigger problems for that country than whether the tax is fair or not.   I would not be quick to judge the government (especially given how complex the situation is over there), some countries go down the toilet and no amount of government control (good or bad) will save them.

 

 

 

 

Grammar and spelling is not indicative of intelligence/knowledge.  Not having the same opinion does not always mean lack of understanding.  

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I don't see how they would do this, but they're free to try. 

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