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October 13, 2003
Skype Hype!
After reading the story in yesterday's New York Times - To Whom May I Direct Your Free Call? one might be lead to the conclusion that Skype is the only freely available PC-to-PC VoIP application on the net today, and that is just not true. Consumer VoIP applications have existed since before 1995 and there are other free networks available today like SIPPhone and Free World Dialup whose communities use the internet as a primary means of communication.
In reality and to their favor, Skype is the first mainstream VoIP in the post "Internet Telephony" era to deliver an application which leverages the genius of Global IP Sound, a company whose existence is not a secret to anyone who has attended a VON Conference and whose technology helps solve the issue of providing high quality voice over the internet under circumstances when most applications just don't work.
Skype provides a freely available product that well, just works.
And this is a breakthrough and is a significant step forward in the evolution of consumer VoIP services. Add to this fact that Skype comes from the same team that delivered KaZaa and knows a thing or two about viral marketing on the net and you can be assured that every kid who has played with KaZaa will eventually take the time to download Skype just to experiment.
The Skype team has proven to me that there are millions of people who don't mind using their PCs as a platform to communication. Until now this was an open question in my mind. While there are millions of other people who at the moment can't be reached on Skype, eventually these communities will become interconnected when independent third-parties start to build proxies and bridges which link the world of Skype with those living within the restrains of the current world of communications.
Those using Skype today represent a new generation of people, living in an always-on broadband empowered world who are engaging in incremental conversations because of the availability of an easy to use application like Skype.
One should thank the Skype team for an application which is helping to introduce a new generation of people to the killer app of the Internet...Voice. Eventually people will realize that Voice will be a part of other applications and that once we can look to voice as an application, voice will start to become embedded into many other IP based applications in the near future.
For those of us who have been around since the beginning, it would be nice to eventually see some of the newspaper and magazine writers engage in a little research and take a look at all of the other similar applications which have existed during the past eight years.
While it is great to see that millions of people have already downloaded Skype and millions more will be doing so over the next few months, it was the success of VocalTec's Internet Phone software back in 1995-96 which helped blaze the trail for what is now the IP Communications industry. Back then when the net population was significantly smaller, VocalTec end up with something like 15+ million plus downloads of their software and more than a million people who paid a few for the commercial version of Internet Phone.
As Skype continues to evolve as an internet application, it will be real interesting to watch how extensions to Skype based presence starts to evolve and the kinds of additional connectivity which becomes available as a result of the advent of Skype.
Posted by jeff on October 13, 2003 04:08 AM | Permalink
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Comments
"""this is just another "Killer App" that will fade into the sunset - people will never sit at their PC's in significant numbers and make phone calls, even of they are free!!!"""
Great point.
Now what about those millions who are already "tied" to their pc's on a daily basis...?
In other words individuals who work for comanies who wish to utlize this technology, or another large and ever growing class....the home based business people.
Posted by: Craig D at December 22, 2003 09:57 PM
Super producxt all the wya down line nothing bad to say only good and advantages when compared to the rest of them.
Not correct as more and more hotspots are being rolled out where wireless laptops already today use the technology offered by skype. Large telecoms are rolling them out like BT here in the UK and hotels airports, co, all over the place. Are the telecomms backstabbing themsleves while doing so I dont know but it looks cool in the future check out www.xtconnect.com and www.ask4.com for soem good examples I helped develop de software for billing behind the hotspots discussed. I hope this answers a few questions having UPnP and NAT traversal makes Skype unique and the most powerfull application today as no engineer is required to setup an inexperieced user a kid could set it up if he has a microphone and knows where to plug it into the internet enbled workstation, server or standalone machine, skype runs on all MS OS above window 2000.
Superb product no doubt in my mind.
Cheers
Chralie
Posted by: Charles Osstyn at December 9, 2003 12:11 PM
A perfect example of Jeff's point when he states
"...it would be nice to eventually see some of the newspaper and magazine writers engage in a little research and take a look at all of the other similar applications which have existed during the past eight years. "
Look at this 11-7-03 article in Telephony:
http://telephonyonline.com/ar/telecom_finally_killer_app/index.htm
I took the liberty to point out to the author that Skype is late to the party and though the quality may be slightly improved, this is just another "Killer App" that will fade into the sunset - people will never sit at their PC's in significant numbers and make phone calls, even of they are free!!!
Posted by: David at November 13, 2003 11:08 AM
It is the only VOIP that works in my dorm.
Posted by: Paul at November 11, 2003 10:19 AM
Despite being a great P2P application, it is not standards based. That is *NOT* the way to go in the IP communications industry. Itīs time for all multimedia applications to build on standard interfaces. Time is gone for vendors, e.g Clarent, that succeeded in the past with NON standard architectures.
Posted by: Juan Luis Esteban at October 28, 2003 04:25 AM
You can read in Skype FAQ that they will add SIP in the future (near future ? Andreas ?).
Andreas think Skype is above SIP but in fact it needs SIP (gateways, "find me",...) and SIP needs Skype (community, instant and online "everyone" yellow page, ...) even if they have very different approach of IP communication (p2p vs centralised info, ...). It's time to gather.
Posted by: Phil Manzano at October 27, 2003 01:18 PM
Jeff,
In my opinion, there were two main reasons that Skype instantly appealed to many users:
1. It works through a NAT'd firewall
2. It works over Dialup
Thus, for example, it was extremely easy for me to have a free conversation from my DSL connection in Houston with my best friend, who had only a Dialup connection in New Zealand.
By the way, the quality was good on this call too!
regards,
steve
Posted by: Steve Branch at October 21, 2003 03:06 PM
Some very good points made but also missing a few details. Skype "works" for most users due to some very smart NAT traversal techniques, and Skype can remain free because it uses minimal centralized resources due to some very innovative p2p technology which allows it to Scale with very low costs. These two factors (and also privacy) have not been adequately addressed prior to Skype and are probably chief contributing factors to the success so far. Part of the skill of the developers has been in obscuring this highly complex technology from the user. So though it may seem like Hype which has led to Skypes success, I think in reality it's some very brilliant programming that most users will never know or care much about. What the users do know is that Skype works much better than previous experiences with voice applications and this, more than anything else, is the reason for the growth of Skype and the subsequant Hype (which by now is probably well deserved). -A biased opinion
Posted by: Andreas at October 15, 2003 11:14 AM
Jeff, you are quite right! Lots of voip software was pushed in to market in the past 5 years. Actually almost all IM products have building pc-to-pc feature already. Skype, possibly because of Kazza's hugh installation base, attract millions of people's attenttion in a very short time after beta released.
Maybe voip indurstry need to rethink about that, it's a signal, that those small guys may take over telecom giant in the future.
Softswitch and NGN indurstry are still too teleco focused, but the next revelution may come from the enduser, not from the teleco themselves.
Posted by: Robert at October 15, 2003 07:04 AM
Jeff --
That's an interesting idea you have about giving VOIP another five years to mature. Unfortunately, I don't think the states are going to let it happen -- at least not without a fight. And I'm relatively certain that there are more than a few ILECs out there that would just as soon see VOIP die an altogether untimely death, especially since the technology has the potential of totally usurping the current local network access regime. I think it's going to be difficult for the states to really get their arms around VOIP and try to regulate it as an ordinary telecom service. I agree with you: We need at least five years to let this technology mature a bit more.
Posted by: Jim Rogers at October 13, 2003 05:42 PM