Rebtel, the Sweden-based VoIP company, is being blocked again in Germany by E-Plus. Rebtel is letting E-Plus bypass their foreign calling rates by giving a cheaper alternative to calling expensive foreign numbers – through VoIP. Alexander Drewniak wrote about the incident in the company blog.
It seems this is an annual issue with Rebtel. They were blocked in Germany last year as well, exactly around these times of the year. Last year it was O2. Needless to say, but this sort of activity is against EU regulations and also the consumer contracts with E-Plus.
E-Plus is the third largest operator in Germany, so the problem isn’t a small one. Furthermore, Alexander has written the blog post that Rebtel has some 3 million customers who will want to defend their rights for cheaper phone calls. I’m sure E-Plus will get their fair share of contacts from consumers in the coming days if they won’t resolve the situation to Rebtel’s favor.
Unita
Arch Red Oy
Rebtel sounds to me like “Rebel Telecommunication”. Maybe around this time of the year this idea just pops out of E-Plus’ board members’ minds :D
It’s like products coming from 3rd countries to EU that are deemed “Dumping Priced”, while most of the goods are actually sold at higher price than originally produced. The reason is simple: Protection for Local Businesses.
Largely speaking, in certain technology fields, this type of protection leads to slower innovation pace and internationally weaker players coming out from EU comparing to the US, Japan or China.