Skype Issue - It's Become Annoying.

[KhunHeineken]

Hi. I'm an experienced Skype user and have found Skype to be reliable and affordable.

However, recently, when calling Thai mobile phones, I find the person on the other end can not hear me. So, I hang up and ring back. After around 3 to 4 attempts, and sometimes more, the call goes through and they can hear me.

When I ring, I can hear them, but they can't here me.

It's not my equipment or settings, because I will ring the UK, the US, Australia etc - sometimes immediately after, and the call goes through without a problem.

I originally thought it was a temporary Skype problem and it would go away, but it's been there for a few months now.

I recently spoke with a friend of mine who has a Thai wife. When she calls her family on Skype, they have the same problem. They just keep hanging up and ringing back until a call makes it through.

It's only Thai mobiles, not Thai landlines. I never had this issue before. I've tried different ISP's and the issue is still there.

Is anyone else having this problem?

Does anyone know why this is happening? Have the Thai telecommunication companies put some sort of filter or block in place?

I thought this issue may have been on a previous thread, so I searched back 7 pages, and googled as well, but couldn't find it mentioned. If it has been, please post the link.

I don't expect there to be a fix to this issue, but it has aroused my curiosity.

Thanks in advance for any information.

[uptheos]

I have never experienced the problems you're having.

Maybe contact the Skype helpers.

[WhizBang]

The problem you are having has been going for at least one year. When in the USA and I try to call my girlfriend, I frequently get the same situitation as you. I can hear her, but she cannot hear me.

Complaints to skype went unanswered.

[KhunHeineken]

The problem you are having has been going for at least one year. When in the USA and I try to call my girlfriend, I frequently get the same situitation as you. I can hear her, but she cannot hear me.

Complaints to skype went unanswered.

Ok. It sounds like it's not just myself and my friend. I'll send an email to Skype as well.

I didn't expect a fix, just curious now as to why it is only happening with Thai mobiles, and like I said, it's really annoying.

[Crossy]

What mobile service providers are the (non) recipients using?

I've not had this issue and I call my wife every day, she's using DTAC post pay.

[KhunHeineken]

I found this old thread. There's not much information on it. The issue appears to have been around for a while, and with different VoIP companies.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/420098-voip-telephony-blocked-in-thailand/page__hl__+voipbuster#entry4046591

[supaprik]

I'm getting the same here in Bangkok, although recently it seems to have actually improved slightly, seems it matters not where you are calling either, not sure of the problem and my queries to Skype have also gone unanswered...

[KhunHeineken]

What mobile service providers are the (non) recipients using?

I've not had this issue and I call my wife every day, she's using DTAC post pay.

I've never given that a thought. Sure, some of the people I ring would be on DTAC, and some would be AIS. They are probably all on pre-paid. Some calls connect first attempt, others take several attempts before I give up and try again later. I have never made a mental note of which company my friends are using that the call connects first time.

Leave this with me and I will try to see if it's just one Thai mobile company that has the problem.

Edited September 13, 2012 by KhunHeineken

[KhunHeineken]

I'm getting the same here in Bangkok, although recently it seems to have actually improved slightly, seems it matters not where you are calling either, not sure of the problem and my queries to Skype have also gone unanswered...

Yes, it's all over Thailand. It happens when I call Haad Yai, Issan, and everywhere in between.

[Pib]

One way audio problem...sounds like a "NAT Transversal" problem. Basically data packets get loss/misdirected. Google something along the lines of "NAT Transversal VOIP" for more info. Just as much chance the problem probably lies with the Skype servers as with the phone service provider of the number being called.

[Dancealot]

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[Baxer]

Nobody knows about voipdiscount? Link the site to your mobile, make a deal and call away!

Surely... https://www.voipdiscount.com/dashboard

6 years Free and no problems. Join them!

? Free for 120 days it says, the you have to buy credit.

[barryw52]

I think this is a long term issue for 3 + year I used Skype to Thai Mobiles. Before came to work here full time it would often take me 4- 8 calls before I had a twoway audio between my Thai GF and myself. Somethings I can heard her or the other way around. Last Christmas I was in Australia for 10 days still same issue. But I have not experience same issue calling Mobiles in other countries.

[dave111223]

I signed up for the unlimited skype subscription, but it was terrible for calling Thai numbers, so I canceled it. Seems to work fine for US numbers.

[Guest]

One way audio problem...sounds like a "NAT Transversal" problem. Basically data packets get loss/misdirected. Google something along the lines of "NAT Transversal VOIP" for more info. Just as much chance the problem probably lies with the Skype servers as with the phone service provider of the number being called.

Possibility, but I would vote for transcoding problem.

Anyway it would be good if people who use Skype out would report which calls are working and which are not. It could be that Skype has separate VoIP to POTS gateways for each mobile operators. Then for example DTAC could work just fine when AIS not.

Local mobile operators are not likely to do anything to help to solve the issue. In general they don't really like the competition which Skype is giving them

[WhizBang]

What mobile service providers are the (non) recipients using?

I've not had this issue and I call my wife every day, she's using DTAC post pay.

AIS, prepay.

[barryw52]

all my issue have laways been with AIS (12call)

[KhunHeineken]

What mobile service providers are the (non) recipients using?

I've not had this issue and I call my wife every day, she's using DTAC post pay.

Ok, so, last night and today I rang a few friends on their Thai mobile numbers. DTAC is connecting first attempt - AIS is the Thai mobile operator that is causing the problem with Skype.

I'm not sure how they are doing it, and now, I don't really care. I'll be promoting DTAC to friends and family coming over for holidays so their friends and family can actually call them when they are here, using VoIP.

[Crossy]

What mobile service providers are the (non) recipients using?

I've not had this issue and I call my wife every day, she's using DTAC post pay.

Ok, so, last night and today I rang a few friends on their Thai mobile numbers. DTAC is connecting first attempt - AIS is the Thai mobile operator that is causing the problem with Skype.

I'm not sure how they are doing it, and now, I don't really care. I'll be promoting DTAC to friends and family coming over for holidays so their friends and family can actually call them when they are here, using VoIP.

Wifey has an AIS pre-pay SIM in her second slot, assuming I don't get brain fade I'll try calling her on it over the weekend and see if it works any less well than the DTAC.

[CP3]

It is not only skype. other providers have this problem. I believe there is one supplier for thailand route who has squeezed his bandwidth to accommodate more voip channels. For caller, voice is not much of issue, at callee end, the voice is not talkable

[KhunHeineken]

It is not only skype. other providers have this problem. I believe there is one supplier for thailand route who has squeezed his bandwidth to accommodate more voip channels. For caller, voice is not much of issue, at callee end, the voice is not talkable

Mmmmm, would this mean that if you call at a peak time for mobile traffic, your call will not go through? Eg.Thai business hours and between 6pm and 8pm for the foreigners ringing their girlfriends and for Thai wives abroad ringing their families.

I will ring out of peak times and see if it's any better, but I definately had issues with AIS calls and not DTAC calls.

[colinneil]

Skype is a total waste of time , call thai mobile they cannot hear you, buy skype credit go to make a call no credit , it has happened twice now, contact skype, only thing they say is you have used it utter rubbish £10 uk for 1 call of 7 minutes . waste of space .

[SantiSuk]

Skype is a total waste of time , call thai mobile they cannot hear you, buy skype credit go to make a call no credit , it has happened twice now, contact skype, only thing they say is you have used it utter rubbish £10 uk for 1 call of 7 minutes . waste of space .

Check your account before assuming that they are ripping you off. Millions of people use Skype without thinking that the company is stealing their money.

Back to the general point of the OP, Im surprised that people persevere with the service if their regular calling routine means they are having to connect multiple times to get one clean call. At 11 pence a minute (inc VAT) (as an example for connections for a UK subscriber) the costs will soon mount up. The headline call rates (as low as 1.4p a minute to the UK) are misleadingly low when you take VAT and connections costs into account.

[ITGabs]

I have a the unlimited subscription for more than two years and I've using skype for more than 5 in pc and smartphones.

I've been caliing from/to many countries

The problem it's probably more about the upload speed vs ISP traffic shaping.

In Thai ISP I discover two things to bypass this problems.

1. open a connection with a constant download, this improves the latency and unblock in some way the upload speed.

2. reboot or hard reset the router ADSL, this unblock all the persistent problems when the download speed per conenction is limited to 10 or 17 KB/s or blocked.

I don't know the reason about why this fix the conenction problems but the cause should be a shitty "traffic shaping" configuration by the Thai ISPs.

of course you must check that your upload speed is not used by another user or program in your network, one p2p can easily use all the upload speed.

Edit: this should sound strange but when I have problems with the speed or latency I never find problems with the speed test, Speed tests never fail but when I did a speed test speedtest.net outside thailand (probably inside thailand the test are cached in some way) the connection speed go up and all the blocked connections seems working for a while, maybe one minute. I reproduced this behavior many times, that is the reason that I am assuming a shitty traffic shaping configuration, probably they have many triggers to reduce the connection speeds in heavy traffic hours or by heavy users IP, but for the customers not complain they have another triggers that set the max speed when you do a speed test or when you reboot your router (changing IP)

Edited September 15, 2012 by ITGabs

[KhunHeineken]

I have a the unlimited subscription for more than two years and I've using skype for more than 5 in pc and smartphones.

I've been caliing from/to many countries

The problem it's probably more about the upload speed vs ISP traffic shaping.

In Thai ISP I discover two things to bypass this problems.

1. open a connection with a constant download, this improves the latency and unblock in some way the upload speed.

2. reboot or hard reset the router ADSL, this unblock all the persistent problems when the download speed per conenction is limited to 10 or 17 KB/s or blocked.

I don't know the reason about why this fix the conenction problems but the cause should be a shitty "traffic shaping" configuration by the Thai ISPs.

of course you must check that your upload speed is not used by another user or program in your network, one p2p can easily use all the upload speed.

Edit: this should sound strange but when I have problems with the speed or latency I never find problems with the speed test, Speed tests never fail but when I did a speed test speedtest.net outside thailand (probably inside thailand the test are cached in some way) the connection speed go up and all the blocked connections seems working for a while, maybe one minute. I reproduced this behavior many times, that is the reason that I am assuming a shitty traffic shaping configuration, probably they have many triggers to reduce the connection speeds in heavy traffic hours or by heavy users IP, but for the customers not complain they have another triggers that set the max speed when you do a speed test or when you reboot your router (changing IP)

This doesn't explain why I attempt 3 or 4 times to call a Thai mobile, particularly AIS mobile numbers, and give up, then straight away call a number in another country and it is connected on the first attempt and has great sound quality.

I'm thinking AIS have done something to block, or restrict the traffic flow, of Skype, and probably other VoIP providers, to their mobile numbers.

I use Skype, but can other members who use different VoIP providers tell me if they are having the same problem?

[ITGabs]

I have a the unlimited subscription for more than two years and I've using skype for more than 5 in pc and smartphones.

I've been caliing from/to many countries

The problem it's probably more about the upload speed vs ISP traffic shaping.

In Thai ISP I discover two things to bypass this problems.

1. open a connection with a constant download, this improves the latency and unblock in some way the upload speed.

2. reboot or hard reset the router ADSL, this unblock all the persistent problems when the download speed per conenction is limited to 10 or 17 KB/s or blocked.

I don't know the reason about why this fix the conenction problems but the cause should be a shitty "traffic shaping" configuration by the Thai ISPs.

of course you must check that your upload speed is not used by another user or program in your network, one p2p can easily use all the upload speed.

Edit: this should sound strange but when I have problems with the speed or latency I never find problems with the speed test, Speed tests never fail but when I did a speed test speedtest.net outside thailand (probably inside thailand the test are cached in some way) the connection speed go up and all the blocked connections seems working for a while, maybe one minute. I reproduced this behavior many times, that is the reason that I am assuming a shitty traffic shaping configuration, probably they have many triggers to reduce the connection speeds in heavy traffic hours or by heavy users IP, but for the customers not complain they have another triggers that set the max speed when you do a speed test or when you reboot your router (changing IP)

This doesn't explain why I attempt 3 or 4 times to call a Thai mobile, particularly AIS mobile numbers, and give up, then straight away call a number in another country and it is connected on the first attempt and has great sound quality.

I'm thinking AIS have done something to block, or restrict the traffic flow, of Skype, and probably other VoIP providers, to their mobile numbers.

I use Skype, but can other members who use different VoIP providers tell me if they are having the same problem?

In the skype community have many threads with the same problem Skype vs. AIS http://community.skype.com/t5/Call-quality-INACTIVE/Calling-AIS-network-mobile-phone-in-Thailand/td-p/34080 no one find a solution

[Guest]

This doesn't explain why I attempt 3 or 4 times to call a Thai mobile, particularly AIS mobile numbers, and give up, then straight away call a number in another country and it is connected on the first attempt and has great sound quality.

I'm thinking AIS have done something to block, or restrict the traffic flow, of Skype, and probably other VoIP providers, to their mobile numbers.

I use Skype, but can other members who use different VoIP providers tell me if they are having the same problem?

I don't think so. I believe this is a misconfiguration on Skype's gateway. The Skype call out is a normal call for AIS, coming in just like any other phone call.

Without knowing Skype network and service structure, my guess would be following.

Call flow:

Skype on PC -> Skype/network -> Skype2POTS gateway -> Normal landline call -> AIS network -> Receiver.

The Skype2POTS is likely an server which is behind good internet fiber connection (maybe TOT or CAT). It's likely to have on or multiple Public IP-addresses, which also means that there is no NAT problems on this end (anyway NAT problems are more of SIP/RTP problems).

The problem lies on Skype gateway which is serving AIS network. Maybe they have few dead lines, which are not taken off from the outgoing call pool. Maybe it's a capacity problem while transcoding the calls from Skype's codec to G.711 codec which is used by the phone network. In this case the voice is ok, when other calls are dropped...

In any case, this seems to be Skype's problem. Not AIS problem, even if they are suffering from it.

Just best guesses...

[mikebell]

I have never experienced the problems you're having.

Maybe contact the Skype helpers.

Chance would be a fine thing! I was told my account had been BLOCKED because of suspicious activity. I trawled various avenues to unblock it including direct texting? After five continuous days, I gave up. Skype have swallowed my remaining credit. There is NO DIRECT WAY to get in touch with them. I tried asking questions on Forums and kept getting awards from a German Moderator. You have been warned.

[maloyd1]

This doesn't explain why I attempt 3 or 4 times to call a Thai mobile, particularly AIS mobile numbers, and give up, then straight away call a number in another country and it is connected on the first attempt and has great sound quality.

I'm thinking AIS have done something to block, or restrict the traffic flow, of Skype, and probably other VoIP providers, to their mobile numbers.

I use Skype, but can other members who use different VoIP providers tell me if they are having the same problem?

I don't think so. I believe this is a misconfiguration on Skype's gateway. The Skype call out is a normal call for AIS, coming in just like any other phone call.

Without knowing Skype network and service structure, my guess would be following.

Call flow:

Skype on PC -> Skype/network -> Skype2POTS gateway -> Normal landline call -> AIS network -> Receiver.

The Skype2POTS is likely an server which is behind good internet fiber connection (maybe TOT or CAT). It's likely to have on or multiple Public IP-addresses, which also means that there is no NAT problems on this end (anyway NAT problems are more of SIP/RTP problems).

The problem lies on Skype gateway which is serving AIS network. Maybe they have few dead lines, which are not taken off from the outgoing call pool. Maybe it's a capacity problem while transcoding the calls from Skype's codec to G.711 codec which is used by the phone network. In this case the voice is ok, when other calls are dropped...

In any case, this seems to be Skype's problem. Not AIS problem, even if they are suffering from it.

Just best guesses...

Having worked in the Mobile Industry for many years I would say it is a Transcoding issue in the Mobile Network. VoIP requires a high speed codec to be used as the connection is essentially Data. This issue of one way speach was very common in the UK many years ago as opperators started to upgrade to Data transmission for mobiles. After reading this thread I would say that the mobile provider has only partially upgraded its infrastructure and it is pot luck as to which Transcoder your call goes to. If it is an old unit and it cannot handle the Codec sellected for the call then the voice will be lost in one dirrection. This would explain why repeated tries to connect eventually succeed as you have been lucky and been allocated a transcoder that can handle the Data Rate. This issue would be more prevelant in busy periods as the system would always try to place a call via a codec that can handle the data rate and only place it on a transcoder that it not capable of the data rate when the correct one is not available. In this instance the data rate and call quality should be switched to a data rate that the transcoder can handle but some systems have not been configured correctly and the call can go to the old transcoder without being downgraded. I could be totally out of touch with what is out there in the mobile network but going on my experiance this is how I see the problem. This is why the lost speech seems to be ossociated with a particular mobile provider. If a carefull study was made it may also point to a particular area of the network. If I am correct one can only hope that the network will eventually be upgraded to stop these issues.

[linuxuser010101]

I put $10.00 on Skype 2 years ago and spent $2.00 of it listening to people telling me they could not hear me. I guess I will have an $8.00 balance until they find a way to justify taking it from me.