Skype On The iPhone In Germany? Verboten!

"For one-and-a-half years, the use of Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, and Instant Messaging applications is prohibited in all our data tariffs," said Deutsche Telekom T-Mobile spokesman Alexander Graf von Schmettow to Dow Jones Newswire on Thursday.

Deutsche Telekom T-Mobile has exclusive rights to the iPhone in Germany and markets iPhones in five European countries. But unlike other European mobile providers, like Vodafone PLC and Telefonica SA in Spain, it carries restrictions on applications for smartphones. According to von Schmettow, use of VoIP or instant messaging applications on an iPhone is a breach of contract.

Skype's general counsel, Robert Miller, wrote in a post on the Skype blogs, "I find it quite telling that Deutsche Telekom would be so bold as to announce this arbitrary blocking of Skype. They pretend that their action has to do with technical concerns: This is baseless. Skype works perfectly well on iPhone, as hundreds of thousands of people globally can already readily attest. But their announcement also demonstrates that some operators do not fear the customer or regulatory consequences of their bad behavior. It's worth noting that even if German consumers wanted to change mobile providers, they could not: Like Deutsche Telekom, every other German mobile operator contractually forbids consumers from using VoIP applications."

The Skype app for iPhones and BlackBerrys was unveiled earlier this week, with Skype for iPhones available starting this past Tuesday and Skype for BlackBerrys coming in May.

According to Miller and Skype, the App Store had seen more than 600,000 downloads of the Skype software by Wednesday, and it is the No. 1 App Store download in more than 40 countries, including the U.S., Brazil, France, China -- and Germany.

"What amazes me is that Skype is the No. 1 download on the App Store in Germany, and yet the country's dominant telecom operator, Deutsche Telekom, has already made it known that it would block the use of Skype on iPhone (and on Blackberry), both for its mobile network customers and at its Wi-Fi hotspots," said Miller on the blog, citing German newspaper reports.

Some of the first Skype application users called the app "buggy", according to user reviews posted to the iPhone store customer reviews section and other places.