This week, Jamaican carrier Digicel blocked Viber, something that has seemingly occurred every summer. It’s likely that carrier-driven blocks such as this (not like government blocks) will continue, and that’s why Viber is taking the initiative to stop it.
It started this week, when Jamaican carrier Digicel decided to block Viber as well as other VoIP services. While these services are great for customers, carriers often argue that they lose revenues from lost voice and text messaging charges, though it’s possible for them to recoup much of these losses with data charges.
“Viber system automatically noticies such blocks and bypasses them (eventually)”
Viber CEO and founder Talmon Marco announced via Twitter that the “Viber system automatically noticies such blocks and bypasses them (eventually)” and that the system “should finish bypassing this block in the next few hours.” That was on Tuesday, and we’d imagine that there could be attempts from Digicel and LIME to counter such a system.
We’ve reached out to Marco for an update on the situation but the system should already be in place and ready to bypass these blocks. It’s not clear how effective (if at all) such a system will be against government-induced blockages, but we imagine it won’t be too much longer before such a system will be up and running and put to the test.
Of course, to make sure you’re able to get the best support for these new systems, you’ll want to download the latest Viber version.
Update: Talmon Marco tells TruTower that Viber is currently “looking into” the situation and is “not sure yet” of how things are progressing. Stay tuned and we’ll update this article when we have more information.