Russia telecom industry has warned that none other than Skype is a serious threat to national security. The mostly free service is very popular with an increasingly connected Russian population, driving profits from old school telephone use down. Sounds more like whining from a faltering monopoly to me.

At a meeting of the lobby this week, telecom executives portrayed the most popular VoIP programs like Skype and Icq as encroaching foreign entities that the government must control.

“Without government restrictions, IP telephony causes certain concerns about security,” the lobby’s press release said. “Most of the service operators working in Russia, such as Skype and Icq, are foreign. It is therefore necessary to protect the native companies in this sector and so forth.” (Reuters)

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