Even if the company behind Skype is probably going to struggle for a viable business model and will see its technology replaced by a standards-compliant open soruce SIP-based VoIP service, Phil Wolff has two good ideas:
Record A Call Yes! I like this idea. I've had trouble keeping a Gentner working to record calls directly to disc and this would be a great tool.
Conference Calling This may not be possible for most Skype clients to support, since it requires multiple IP tunnels run simultaneously and that may overwhelm the processor or bandwidth available for many users. Since Skype is a peer-to-peer technology, the company could charge a modest fee for a Skype bridge that handled multiple callers. Say $5 a month or $2 a month for conferencing?
On another note, during a Skype call today, the sound faded in and out for both myself and the other call. It was strange, though, because it was not broken and static-sounding like packets were being dropped, but just seemed to fade in and out at one end or the other. Often, one of us could hear the other but could not be heard. It was as though each of our systems were losing their audio resources periodically, which isn't easily explained. Vonage, while it doesn't have the voice quality Skype offers, has not dropped calls on me or done one of these audio fade-outs (it's also nice to have a real phone number with Vonage). However, Vonage is definitely feeling the pressure of nascent VoIP competitors -- last week they cut my bill from $39.95 a month to $34.99 a month for unlimited calling.
There's a long way to go with VoIP. A long way.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at September 29, 2003 01:50 PM | TrackBack