Several countries have banned VoIP services and apps over the past few years and more are sure to follow in the future. They normally publicize that blocking VoIP will help support local telecom companies. The problem is that Internet users rely o VoIP apps to communicate with family around the world. It’s far too expensive to rely on telecom doe international communications. Need to unblock VoIP from your location or a country you plan to visit in the near future? If so you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to show you how to use a VPN to unblock VoIP services from anywhere.
Reporters without Borders (RWB) has put together a list that it calls enemies of the Internet. Many of the countries block VoIP services:
- Bahrain, Belarus, China, Cuba, Ethiopia, India, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.
The key to unblocking VoIP access from restricted countries is using a VPN. How does it work? A virtual private network (VPN) will encrypt your connection and router your Internet traffic through the country of your choice. For example, you could connect to the VPN server in the United States from Saudi Arabia to unblock access to VoIP services like Skype, Google Talk, or FaceTime.
When governments ban VoIP services it only tends to draw attention to popular mobile apps and VPNs. The UAE is a good example. Even after strengthening their laws and increasing the penalties for VoIP use, citizens turned to VPN to continue communicating with friends and family. In the days after the new penalties were announced, 4 of the top 10 Android apps were VoIP related. The apps included WhatsApp Messenger, imo free video calls, Facebook Messenger, and Skype.
How to Use a VPN with VoIP Apps
The key to finding the right VPN to unblock VoIP services is to consider your goal. For example, if you want to talk with with family via Skype then you can rely on any of our top 10 VPN providers to encrypt your connection. Gamers have a little more work to do. The reason is that a VPN can impact your Internet speed as the traffic is encrypted. For gamers who want to use services like Teamspeak, we recommend VPNs that support split tunneling. This will allow you to tunnel your VoIP traffic through the VPN and leave your gaming connections unencrypted. We recommend using IPVanish or StrongVPN to accomplish this goal.
The process of connecting to a VPN is simple. Once you select a VPN provider you can download their client software. For example, IPVanish has a custom VPN client for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. The apps will unblock VoIP by tunneling your traffic through another location. Worried about your ISP or the government monitoring your VoIP activities? This is where encryption comes into play. When you connect to a VPN server we suggest you use OpenVPN which is the default protocol used by IPVanish. This will help protect your privacy by encrypting all the data. The same is true for other online activities.
We’ll end with a warning. There are a lot of companies out there advertising free VPN access. This can be quite dangerous for those who want to circumvent government restrictions. You need to be able to trust the company providing the VPN. Just how much motivation does a company have to protect your privacy for free? There have been several instances of so-called “free VPN” services tracking user activity and selling the data. Some have even been used in DDoS attacks and other nefarious means. Make sure you select a well known VPN to protect your privacy. Do your research and select the best VPN for your VoIP needs.