The Ugandan Government and communications sector regulator, recently announced plans to block the use of “virtual private networks”. These are a key tool for people trying to avoid internet restrictions, surveillance and most recently OTT Tax.
However, this planned crackdown on VPNs isn’t surprising. Logically, the government will do everything in its powers just to make sure everyone pays the OTT Tax to increase revenue. On July 1st 2018, telecoms blocked access to OTT services for those that hadn’t paid the new tax.
Since the government has a history of blocking certain websites and online services, some ‘smart’ Ugandans had plans A, B, C and D –VPN. Plans to fend off Social media tax. However, the commission swore to block VPN, and included them on the list of OTT Services. This raised the question of whether the Government of Uganda can actually pull off something that has been pestering China and Russian governments. Stopping VPNs.
Beyond the shadow of doubt, VPNs still allow citizens to access OTT Services without, well you know it, paying the OTT Tax. It is almost 3 weeks after implementation of the tax. So was the commission bluffing? If they had the chance to stop VPNs, I’m sure we there wouldn’t be any active VPN right now.
UCC explains VPNs.
First things First. “Over the top services” is defined in Section 2 of The Excise Duty Amendment Act to mean: “the transmission or receipt of voice or messages over the internet protocol network & includes access to Virtual Private Networks.” This is were Virtual private networks come into picture.
However, there are many terms used to categorize & describe the functionality of VPN. This leads to a great deal of confusion about what exactly VPNs are and what they can do. “We know that among others, there is Intranet & Extra-net VPNs.” UCC wrote in a tweet.
A virtual private network allows the provisioning of private network services for an organisation over a public or shared infrastructure such as the Internet. Over the past few years IP Multi-protocol Label Switching based VPNs have become more popular
Therefore, many organisations use VPNs to allow connectivity between sites of a single organisation or allow connectivity between organisations such as business partners or a business and its customers. The provision introducing Excise duty on OTT services had this consideration
Telecom operators were required to block unpaid access to OTTs form Site-to-site VPN that allow connectivity between an organisation’s geographically dispersed sites. This is because an organisation’s head office and its branch offices may use Virtual Private Networks.
This was the spirit of the requirement. But, there are yet more methods of categorizing VPNs. They can be further categorized depending on how they operate. Connection oriented or connection-less? Overlay or peer-to-peer? Secure or trusted?
And now your VPNs.
“The VPN applications that have gained popularity operate as tunnels rerouting internet traffic anonymously & are difficult to stop.” admitted UCC. The telecoms can stop some at application level, but not all. “This is because they keep coming up & some are even dynamic in nature. If that gives you sleep at night.” The commission explained further.
Therefore, when the regulator talks about blocking VPNs, the priority is organisational and business VPN. Whereas they have acknowledged the challenges with internet access VPNs, they are not sustainable.
Frank Tumwebaze on VPNs.
“VPN? Whether UCC succeeds in blocking [them] or not, I am not very enthusiastic about blocking. But ask yourself, how much data are you using to download VPN to enable you get the by-pass capacity?”
He argued that any committed Ugandan who wants services from their government should not contribute money, 30 times the OTT tax to the innovators of VPN. On social media tax remaining he said, “This is why I call for logical debates, not emotional debates.”
While we may not all believe in a clandestine globalist takeover at the hands of the illuminati, I think we can all agree that VPNs are hard to stop.
