Skype, the peer-to-peer Internet telephony network owned by eBay, has announced that its VoIP software has been downloaded over 500 million times since its inception in August 2003, and with 171 million active user accounts, Skype is currently the most popular provider of VoIP services in the world.
Skype was founded by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, the duo who created the file sharing program Kazaa, and it looks set to become just as popular and influential, if not more so, than the pair’s previous site.
Like Kazaa, Skype works using P2P networks, and provides free VoIP calls to other Skype users whilst either sat at their computer using a microphone headset, or by using any DECT phone that is Skype-compatible such as the Philips VoIP 1211. As well as free P2P VoIP calls, Skype users can also chat via an MSN-esque IM service, make cheap calls to traditional numbers, including mobiles, and allows users to create local numbers in foreign countries making it cheaper to communicate with associates across the globe. In a further comparison to Kazaa, Skype has been lauded as a threat to traditional telcos in the same way that music file-sharing sites were to the recording industry.
However, the music business is still here, the Kazaa site has been dormant for ages, and unauthorised mods and spin-offs such as Kazaa Lite and K++ haven’t exactly set the world on fire.
Traditional telcos, are also still in positions of relative comfort in the market – as an Internet connection is required to make use of Skype’s features, companies like Orange, Tiscali, BT and TalkTalk, who supply Broadband services with their phone calls and other services wont be losing that much sleep, as users will have to go through (at least) one of their parent or other services to get access to Skype.
And, with more and more mobile phones able to make use of Skype features, it seems that Skype is less likely to be a bugbear to Broadband suppliers like Virgin and Orange who run mobile networks.
Similar Posts: