Skype, Google Talk, and any other VoIP (Voice over IP) services have been banned in Ethiopia in a controversial move.

An Al Jazeera Report has said that it is now a criminal offence to use such services. This will affect freedom of speech, and internet filtering has been occurring in the country for some time now according to various sources, such as Tech Crunch

If you use a VoIP service, it could land you up to 15 years in prison. This is the same sort of sentence you get for murder in the United Kingdom, although in Dubai, this is what you get for simply kissing your girlfriend on the beach. It can be hard to keep track of individual country laws as they are all different, and with more people having access to other countries for business or pleasure, it is landing more tourists in prison and it can put some people off from wanting to have a holiday in these particular places.

According to Reporting without Borders, the country used Ethio Telecom to install a system that banned the Tor network ,which is a system that allows users to browse the internet anonymously.

Its not like they are downloading too many videos or large files that can worry the government, as the average internet speed in Ethiopia is just 622kbps.