Skype really seems like the big thing now. It lets you make pc-to-pc calls for free and call non-internet phones at extremely low rates. Everybody seems to be going nuts about it. It even does messaging and the beta version does video conferencing. I saw a quote where some big shot at the FCC said he tried it and realized that the telecom and phone business was never going to be the same.
But I have to ask: What is so great and revolutionary about this? I’m not saying that their service isn’t any good, because it is pretty good, but there’s really nothing new about it.
You’ve been able to make pc-to-pc calls for free over the internet since the early days of Windows ’95. The products were pretty new back then and they weren’t as high quality as now, but they existed.
Internet to PSTN phone was pioneered by a few companies quite a while ago. Net2phone was one of the first to offer dirt cheap internet to phone calling for consumers, way back in 1996. In 1999, the company Dialpad.com began offering FREE calls to phone numbers in the US and continued to do so for a couple years. You didn’t even need an account! By 2000, companies like Vontage were beginning to go mainstream with VoIP phones and today there’s a whole bunch of them out there.
Internet video conferencing isn’t new either. It’s been around just about as long. And as far as voice with messaging services, MSN, Yahoo and AIM have all been able to do that for quite a while, although not all the services have great quality.
If you do a search, you will find that there are many messaging networks and video conferencing and phone services out there. There have been for a long time, but most of them never got much attention.
So some people will point to the fact that Skype is based on protocols and codecs which are higher quality than the ones from the early days of VoIP. Well, obviously technology is going to improve, but it’s not like it’s the first service to use high quality audio codecs either. Even if Skype is higher quality than some of he predecessors, I would argue that that is more “evolutionary” than “revolutionary.”
So, can someone please explain to me why Skype is such a big deal???
For the same reason the Internet became a “big thing” around 1998, even though it had been around, and geeks had been using it, for decades before.
Because enough people knew about it to realize it’s potential.
Just critical mass, nothing more. Skype happens to be the recipient of the “right place at the right time” award (although I suspect if you did a straw poll, you’d find more pople recognize Vonage – even if they don’t know why it’s not just “another phone company”).
Because things like Skype and Vonage (and the Internet) need a critical mass of people already using them to become viable ways of replacing the older technologies that currently provide the services they are capable of providing. Free computer-to-computer calls only mean something if enough people you want to call have the software to allow you to save significant amounts of money off of your phone bill. Commonly, there was nothing technologically preventing a huge take-off in popularity prior to the boom except, well, the popularity.
I do get what you’re saying, but if a voip client has support for PSTN connectivity, then you have no problem with the user base. Actually, some VoIP software isn’t really oriented toward pc-to-pc type services. It’s more supposed to act like a regular phone even if both parties have pc based phones.
In any case, I find it laughable that people see this as revolutionary. It seems to be the VoIP system which just caught on best.
Also Skype have their SkypeIn service which allows Skype users to receive calls on their computers dialled by regular phone subscribers to regular phone numbers.
I think one of the big reasons Skype became so popular was because it has easy installation, and pretty much “just works” for most people without having to screw with its settings.
I am not sure why you would see it as ‘laughable’ that people find it revolutionary. Sure everything you said was true, but ease of use is the single most important factor in determining technological advancements. If the regular joe can’t use it then its pretty damn useless. See windows v. Linux.
Okay, maybe I just won’t let this one die, but I really don’t see how skype is that much easier than anything else.
I mean, do you remember dialpad.com? You just went there and clicked a link and there was a “dialpad” applet. Click the numbers and hit “call” and there ya go; you’re on the phone. And it didn’t matter how many of your friends used it, because it connected to regular phone numbers. With yahoo im, which has supported voice and video for at least three years, you hit “connect to talk” and there ya go!
And the whole “Skype-in” thing. That ain’t a new service either. Net2phone did it in like 1997. And it was windows software and I’m assuming it would install without having to do anything crazy like edit the registry or compile the software manually or anything.
Not to mention the non-pc VoIP hardware. Vontage has been around with a VoIP plug-n-play router for quite a while. Plug a line into your cable or dsl modem, plug a standard telephone into the phone jack. Usually the unit was pre-activated when you bought it (which you could do on their website or even at some brick and mortor stores). It’d take about a minute or so tops to register itsself and there you go…you can make calls just like a regular phone. Dial tone and everything.
It’s not like Skype is completely free of issues either. If you’re in a weird situation like behind a firewall and using a non-standard proxy or something, then it’s going to require some configuring just like anything else. You still have to figure out which sound card port is for the microphone.
Maybe it’s a bit more intuitive, but again, I see this as evolutionary not revolutionar. It’s not dramatically easier than it’s predicessors. And there are still people out there posting to boards about how they can’t get it to work for them.
I’ve beening using it for a couple years now to help keep my phone bill down when calling friends overseas. Outside of that though, I wouldn’t ever use it for domestic calls.
Skype is too processor intensive for my needs. We were using it as a voice chat system while playing MMORPGs. It works fine on my computer (a year old) but slows down even my fiance’s which is two years old. My pal on a laptop can’t do anything while Skype is up.
Now, if Google Talk could just get more than two users talking at a time, we’d be set.
Vonage customer chiming in. There were two reasons I went for this. One, I could keep my old Verizon land-line number. There’s nothing more of a pain in the ass than dissemnating a new phone number to credit card companies, utilities, etc.
Secondly, the ease of use; once it was setup, I’m using my old cordless phone and the “nuts and bolts” part is hidden.
Skype - right time, right place for international business callers. I use it exclusively for international calls. I have customers and business partners in Sweden, The Netherlands, the UK, Australia, India, Costa Rica, Mexico, and more. Skype is now the de facto standard for making international business calls. My monthly phone bill used to be over $1,000 a month for international calls. It is now $0.
One of the the best features of Skype is Skype-Out. I buy 10 Euros worth of Skype phone credits in advance. If I make a call, say to a customer’s mobile phone in France, the call is charged as if it were a local French call. This saves me a huge amount of money.
Using Skype-Out, a customer from Sweden called into a US 800 number for a two hour conference call and was charged about $2.00, rather than the $80 it would have been using regular phone service.
I don’t use Skype for calls within the US - that’s what Vonage is for!