Skype Don't Want to Interconnect

Interesting to see Dan York's comments on Skype over on his Disruptive Telephony Blog. Basically Skype's PR line is that they would connect up to other VoIP providers, but the customers simply aren't asking for it. It seems inconceivable to me that there is no demand for being able to Skype through to other VoIP networks. I for one would love it if Skype and many of the SIP services that I use could seamlessly call through to each other, free-of-charge. (By the way such free interconnects do exist from Voipuser to some other enlightened services like FWD and Voxalot).

It seems more likely to me that it's the same story as Facebook, though, that it's all about how many users you've got signed up for your service. Having a closed community makes it easier to argue to the money-men that your service offers unique value that users cannot get elsewhere. Also, Skype have a monetary reason not to interconnect - that islands of VoIP usually need to connect by breaking out into the PSTN, which means paying money for Skypeout.

To look at the statement another way, also: why do the users need to think up all the ideas before they get implemented? If Skype only implemented ideas due to customer demand, then they would be in a pickle: basically without thought leadership, their service wouldn't exist at all today. After all how many of today's Skype users knew three years ago that you could use a computer to make free international calls?

Reply from dean on Jan 19, 2008 - 08:33 PM

Quote:

Skype's PR line is that they would connect up to other VoIP providers, but the customers simply aren't asking for it.

I think this is about educating the user isn't it? Many users of Skype know it as "VoIP" but don't understand the implications of peering/interconnection of VoIP networks.

Is the implication just price-related?

Reply from satphoneguy on Jan 19, 2008 - 08:38 PM

if i exclude my very technically inclined friends very few of the skype users i know even know of the existence of most SIP services; it is simply not an issue to them. also the vast majority of the skype users i know have zero interest in doing anything other than connect to the PSTN; they are looking for a cheaper way to make and receive traditional phone calls - end of story. at $3/month for skype pro they satisfy there desire to save big on long distance calling.

my SIP(i am not including all out phone line replacement customers like vonage users) using friends on the other hand are a whole different story; nearly all are computer enthusiasts of one sort or another who are as interested in how it works as they are in actually using it.

Reply from dean on Jan 19, 2008 - 08:53 PM

Quote:

if i exclude my very technically inclined friends very few of the skype users i know even know of the existence of most SIP services

That's also my experience. Skype did a fantastic job on branding - you have to hand it to them. 6/10 people will tell you that "VoIP" means Skype. Perhaps only 1 in 1,000 will have heard of SIP.

I'm not sure if they understand the implications (either cost or convenience/service etc), or whether those implications really mean anything to them.

Reply from mazilo on Jan 19, 2008 - 08:59 PM

If you want to be able to place/receive free calls from any PSTN number through phones from any US lower 48 States, then you ought to be looking something else other than Skype, i.e. GrandCentral (GC) + GizmoProject (GP) or GrandCentral (GC) + IPKall + FreeWorldDialup (FWD). Either combination will definitely give you free calls to/from US with a free DID # from most cities in the US lower 48 States, let alone the call quality is way much better than Skype calls, YMMV. Not only will you be saving your $$$ on long distant calls, but you are also able to save your $$$ from on an overly priced Skype hardware that ONLY works with Skype. Anyway, the only two caveats that I found out using this approach are as follows:

1. One needs to press 1 on the telephone keypad to receive incoming calls. However, if you have an Asterisk Digital PBX system, this problem can be easily circumvented. Just configure your Asterisk Digital PBX system to automatically answer the call and send a DTMF tone of 1, i.e. SendDTMF(1), to emulate the press 1 key. With this hack, you are no longer able to facilitate the voicemail system provided by a GC service. For me, having no GC voicemail service is definitely a much better way to conceal GC services from the callers.
   
2. One needs to login to his/her GC account to use the webclick function to place outgoing calls. Then, the conversation will be carried over through your corded/cordless telephone connected to your SIP compliant ATA device that has been configured with either a GP or a FWD account to accept incoming calls from your GC account. Like Skype, this option requires a computer to login to your GC account.

Reply from ianplain on Jan 19, 2008 - 10:08 PM

Hi

Ok a key thing that made skype succeed was that it worked...

Basicly you downloaded the software installed it signed up and it worked. The same cannot be said of SIP services of the same period. Things are different now, many of the problems with SIP services are now sorted.

Basicly Skype is mass market, It passes the Grandma test with flying colours.

It is a shame that they dont interconnect but thats a commercial decsion, They dont seem to mind users having sip/skype conversion software clients so interconnects are easily possible if you want.

Ian

Reply from viperdudeuk on Jan 20, 2008 - 08:57 AM

This is a very complicated issue IMHO and not without a large amount of self interest thrown in.

From a commercial point of view if you can lock in your users to your network then its a win win situation, you can charge for off-net and look to monetise your on-net offering somehow (if at percieved zero cost to the caller even better). On the other hand if you wish to establish peering with as many off-net networks as possible then you start to lose revenue which is a problem to most businesses. This is also a problem the mobile operators are struggling with as services arrive that allow users to bypass the operators own voice service on the hanset.

Of course it makes sense to any telecoms operator to try and minimize costs and bilateral or multilateral peering arangements can play apart in this. If the operator passes on the savings in full or in part is another matter. No VoIP call is free at the very least bandwidth has to be paid for both by the user and the operator if they provide media services of some kind. Also in the current climate hosting costs are increasing due to supply and demand considerations and other cost increases such as electricty.

Recently some operators have started to use in call advertising (more specifically during call setup) such as http://www.jajah.com/info/advertise which is a noval idea but how acceptable it will be to the masses remains to be seen.

So as the market matures the question is how do VoIP operators generate revenue?

Reply from canam101 on Jan 20, 2008 - 01:53 PM

A couple of years ago, before I knew what sip was and before I had an ata, I might have spent some money on skype if I could have found a gadget I could trust that would plug into a usb port and let me connect a telephone to it.

I know that there are plenty of gadgets to do that now, and there were more than a few then, but that was the problem: I didn't want to do the research to figure out which ones were worth buying. And I already had a phone and didn't want to spend a lot of money on a new skype phone, and I didn't like the idea of having to, in addition, buy skype credits to make pstn calls.

If skype wanted to get my business, they should have come out with a Skypejack. They didn't think of it, I guess, but now that magicjack is around, maybe they will.

If the average guy, who thinks of skype when he thinks of voip, could buy a skypejack that he could just plug in, and that ran a setup program, and he could plug in his phone and get a dial tone, and get a year's worth of free calling to whatever continent he lived on, then I think skype could make a big comeback. If I hadn't figured out how to use sip, I know I'd buy it.

They need to interconnect to sip as well, but that probably won't happen until ebay sells it to somebody with more imagination.

But the main thing to do now is to build a skypejack and market the blazes out of it, and sell it in every drugstore and grocery store in the land, shrink-wrapped at the checkout counter.

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