Skype on the iPhone - what does it mean?

Some interesting stats from Peter Parkes at Skype on the sign up numbers:-

Quote:

....it’s no surprise that we’ve stormed past the 2 million download milestone. This means an average rate of 2-3 downloads per second since the app first appeared on the 31st March.

http://share.skype.com/sites/en/insight/

Hudson Barton has some thoughts as to what this means to the mobile VoIP industry as a whole:-

Quote:

It has been the fastest run to 1 million downloads of any application in the Apple's App store. And now to go to 2 million so quickly means that all other VOIP applications on iPhone are in deep trouble.

Quote:

Skype's new "SILK" voice codec is... almost good enough for hi-fidelity music. There is simply no way that any of the other major competitors can turn a profit at the price level that Skype has driven it to. Even if they could then the difference in quality and features will make it simply impossible to them to compete.

http://ckipe.com/blog/skype

I have to agree with Hudsons sentiment, much though it's a shame as I have a number of personal friends at all of the companies that he states as being in serious trouble. But he's right. I've continuously been trying for a long time to express to clients the danger in trying to compete in the cheap minutes market. This is what you're up against (and I'm sure that many of them have secretly feared Skype ever going mobile, which has frankly always been inevitable).

Skype are also about to release versions of Skype for Nokia (pre-installed through a partnership) and Blackberry devices.

This space was always going to have one lead player. That lead player is Skype and we all need to get used to this, and the VC's in this space need to wake up to this very quickly and start repositioning their funds.

We do now have Skype for SIP in BETA (VoIP User is in the BETA program, so we hope to have something to show you using this soon) and of course Skype for Asterisk and Skype for business, so the borders are now opening and the consumer benefits will really start to roll this year.

It also leaves lots of business around the edges for the creative startups like adhearsion and others that I view to be the real problem-solvers in this industry. My opinion is smart applications that save us all time are where the real value is. Not networks that save us a few pence.

Reply from ianplain on Apr 09, 2009 - 11:29 PM

I think that after a while looking at the market ebay have worked out what todo with Skype. And that wait has been worthwhile, They could have rushed things out half baked, but instead have waited. (It seems that rushing out half baked products is becoming the domain for Google.)

But Getting back to Skype, I for one have never had any issues with it being a proprietary protocol, I have worked with those for many years, and to be fair it can allow for a better feature set, I have had an issue with the lack of interoperability but that now is changing.

Myself I cant wait to play with the Skype - sip service, having for years used various software Kludges to do this, Most recently and to be honest Im very pleased with, the Gizmo project gateway as this allows outdialing.

So Skype on the Iphone? . I have use it and its good. I use it for chat a lot and yes it does have to be in the foreground for calls but chat will catchup when you logon, so not an issue for me.

We have to remember that Skype is the ubiquitous face of voip and accept it. My "aged" parents use it to video chat to my children as it just works......

Ian

Reply from Nik on Apr 11, 2009 - 03:40 AM

World leading telecom providers bans Skype’s iPhone app. http://www.xchangemag.com/hotnews/skype ... sigh-.html Carriers simply care about income, and do not give a chance to use it over own data network. In Russia mobile calls are much cheaper today than data traffic making it absurd to use apps like Skype for iPhone.

Reply from ianplain on Apr 11, 2009 - 09:59 AM

Hi

This is being posted all over the web about T-Mobile. BUT I cant find any mention of this specificity on their German site. Perhaps someone may be able to post details from T-Mobile saying this and not third parties quoting old news that T-Mobile was blocking voip, This restriction was removed AFAIK some time back. Then as to the AT&T blocking voip over 3g from the Iphone. This is a Apple iPhone "feature". And common across all carriers unless the phone is jailbroken

Instead of urban myths and conjecture lets see something in writing from a user or the comany concerned.

Ian

Reply from andyk on Apr 11, 2009 - 11:52 AM

Quote:

Instead of urban myths and conjecture lets see something in writing from a user or the comany concerned.

And then delete them again, as for a recent discussion about other products not quite working as described and promoted, perhaps in case someone here is made to look like they don't know what they're on about?

Why are some people here so keen to gainsay facts; are they too lazy to look for themselves?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/03 ... cks_skype/

On Wednesday, Deutsche Telekom's mobile arm, T-Mobile Germany, decreed that subscribers who used its service to make VoIP calls using Skype for the iPhone (iTunes link) could have their service severed.

In an article in Thursday's USA Today, AT&T exec Jim Cicconi said that his company had "every right" to not promote the services of a wireless rival - meaning Skype.


http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-germa ... ing-skype/

The controversy around Skype rolls on. German carrier T-Mobile, and exclusive carrier of the iPhone in Germany, will not allow customers to use the application, and is blocking it both physically and contractually. T-Mobile spokesperson Alexander von Schmettow told the German online site, the Local that not only does it go against the terms of its contract with consumers, but that the “high level of traffic would hinder our network performance,” and ...

and It seems that the fact that it runs on Wi-Fi rather than on its networks has made it more palatable to O2.



http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2009- ... hone_N.htm

Jim Cicconi, AT&T's top public policy executive, says AT&T has "every right" not to promote the services of a wireless rival.

"We absolutely expect our vendors" — Apple, in this case — "not to facilitate the services of our competitors," he says.

"Skype is a competitor, just like Verizon (VZ) or Sprint (S) or T-Mobile," he says, adding, Skype "has no obligation to market AT&T services. Why should the reverse be true?"


http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20090331-18359.html

But this acceptance comes with some reluctance. AT&T in the United States is prepared to allow the use of Skype software on iPhones when calls are made via wireless internet hotspots. O2, the only UK service provider with rights to the iPhone has also chosen to give its customers access to the new application, according to daily The Times on Tuesday.

“We understand [Skype] have designed this to work solely over Wi-Fi. We have not blocked the application and, if it is available in the App Store, it will be available to our customers,” a spokesperson told the paper.

My opinion: except in a subscribed-to zone provided by them or their contracted affiliates, wi-fi use is next to none of the main networks' business


Someone is going to have to definitively find out whether the name von Schmettov is someone who works for T-mobile, and whether Jim Cicconi exists at AT&T, or whether all these conjectures are simply a series of April Fool jokes.

One problem with the April Fool possibility is that articles have been updated on the 2nd, referred back to in new articles written on the 3rd, and so on. And one of the articles mentioned was published on 31st March.


The USA Today article ends: Is the Wi-Fi only limitation of the new Skype app a hassle, or not? Would the service be more attractive if AT&T carried it over cellular and 3G networks, as well? Tell us about it by posting a comment below.

So far, it seems nobody has taken the bait.


"Robert Miller is Skype’s General Counsel."

http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2009/04 ... ng_an.html

I find it quite telling that Deutsche Telekom would be so bold as to announce this arbitrary blocking of Skype. They pretend that their action has to do with technical concerns: this is baseless. Skype works perfectly well on iPhone, as hundreds of thousands of people globally can already readily attest. But their announcement also demonstrates that some operators do not fear the customer or regulatory consequences of their bad behaviour. It’s worth noting that even if German consumers wanted to change mobile providers, they could not: like Deutsche Telekom, every other German mobile operator contractually forbids consumers from using VoIP applications. (this is the same in France, actually).

This is a real shame: many other operators around the world know very well that people want to use innovative Internet applications, like Skype, and that’s the reason they pay their ISP to access the Internet in the first place.

On top of that, there is no technical justification for this arbitrary blocking of Skype, and it represents a barrier to online business put in place by a private company just because they can, because they control access to the Internet.


Ok, time's up. Decide. Who are the April Fools in all these sagas?


back to USA Today:

Technically, the limitation on Skype and other Internet phone companies is imposed by Apple, which has similar arrangements with other carriers.

Reply from andyk on Apr 11, 2009 - 12:33 PM

So there still seems to be a great deal of ambiguity as to whether Skype use is allowed via 3g or only wi-fi

I've been to a number of events where the organisers asked people not to use Skype, as it hogged all of the bandwidth available on up to 10 broadband landline phone lines, and almost stopped ordinary internet browsing. Waiting 10 minutes to get allocated an internal IP address, when it's said that up to 64 should be available, and then 15 minutes to download one single 200k web page is not fun.

Perhaps all the Skype fans can explain why the cuckoo pushing the other birds out of the nest is a social benefit to everyone. If this happens now on shared connections over landlines, then if Skype was allowed on 3g, how long before it swamps mobile networks and shoves out those own mobile networks' customers? From my limited technical knowledge of all this, even I know that VoIP codecs mostly use quite a bit more bandwidth than GSM.

Given that they are already giving away mobile broadband arguably too cheaply (from free), I can't see any moral obligation on the mobile networks to underwrite that risk.

Reply from andyk on Apr 11, 2009 - 01:13 PM

Quote:

Instead of urban myths and conjecture lets see something in writing from a user or the comany concerned. Ian

Here's some more:

http://apcmag.com/Content.aspx?id=3723

T-Mobile’s aggressive stance goes a step beyond merely a mere 3G lockout. The carrier has also banned Skype from its extensive network of Wi-Fi hotspots and says it will cancel the contract of subscribers who install any workarounds to bypass their block.

The reasons, say T-Mobile, are purely technical rather than economical. A spokesman for T-Mobile told German media that the company has been in fact blocking all VoIP applications over its mobile network for two years.

“There are two reasons for this – because the high level of traffic would hinder our network performance, and because if the Skype program didn't work properly, customers would make us responsible for it.”

The people behind the world’s leading VoiP application are not impressed. Skype's general counsel, Robert Miller, has called the decision “an April's Fool joke at the expense of Skype users in Germany”.


It would seem to be rather a long time for Skype's chief lawyer to spend on these allegations, or urban myths and conjectures as Ian describes them, if they weren't actually true.

You can find statements like this all over the place:

Miller wrote. “They pretend that their action has to do with technical concerns: this is baseless."

I said above that I don't have intimate technical knowledge of all this, but given empirical experiences that Skype use can tend to reduce quality for other internet users, I rather suspect his remarks rebutting the plausibility of technical reasons might be construed as rather arguable.

The internet is a great resource, and as people keep saying, Google is your friend:

http://www.google.com/search?q=t-mobile ... april+fool

Reply from ianplain on Apr 11, 2009 - 10:18 PM

Hi

Yes I have read many articles on the "blocking" of skype and as you will find they are mainly classic Blog reporting, That is reporting what has been said on another blog as fact.

for example
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/03 ... cks_skype/
quotes
http://www.moconews.net/entry/419-germa ... ing-skype/
which quotes
http://www.thelocal.de/sci-tech/20090331-18359.html
which quotes an article in
The Financial Times Deutschland
Which I havent been able to locate a full UK translation of.

And then we have Robert Millars piece that almost everyone quotes. http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2009/04 ... ng_an.html

and he quotes

http://translate.google.com/translate?p ... ry_state0=

which does loose a lot in translation.

And so they go around

Now what is missing is a quote from T-Mobile or DT . There are quotes from happy german Iphone users. who have downloaded and used skype in Germany so downloading isnt blocked and neither is use it seems.

Now I Have used Voip on T-Mobiles wifi network in germany with no issues in the past. Also I have used Voip on T-Mobiles 3G network in Berlin and and In Holland. It was not blocked and worked as expected.

As to the blocking of Voip/Skype over 3g with an Iphone. This is the same for all carriers AFAIK as its a stated design intent of the iPhone. This is probably why Google are using callback for GoogleVoice on the iPhone. AFAIK there is no Voip apps that will work over 3g on an unbroken iPhone.

The majority of this story can be traced back to the original story from Skype. And this then make really good PR for them.

The whole story does contain a lot of FUD, as would be expected.

Ian

Reply from martyndavies on Apr 12, 2009 - 11:13 AM

A lot of it seems to all route back eventually to the same briefing where T-Mobile said something to Associated Press. The Skype legal counsel then wrote his famous blog entry.

I contacted some German friends, and what I hear is that in practice T-Mobile customers can use the iPhone Skype client. It's not blocked. There are Skype-blocking solutions in existence (Narus, Bluecoat), but they don't seem to be in use by German operators. Incidentally detecting and blocking Skype is challenging because everything is encrypted, the signalling mechanisms are secret, and it uses port-hopping. Also the algorithms can change from version to version if Skype want it to.

However, using Skype clearly is in violation of the terms of service, and T-Mobile would be within their rights to withdraw service. This is not a new thing, and applies equally to VoIP solutions run on Symbian, or Blackberry or Windows Mobile platform, and as we know many of those clients and services have existed for some time.

The Skype blog implies that there is a failure of regulation, but as I understand it, the German Government, and specifically the regulator do not have to do anything, because the customers have agreed to the terms of service from T-Mobile. This is the problem with regulators, that what they do is interpret the words (from a legal standpoint) that make up the operator's license. They are not concerned with "fairness" in any kind of warm and fuzzy way; only what is written down and enforceable.

I think that Skype have played a very skillful game with their entry into mobile. It's difficult to juggle the requirements of handset vendors, customers and telcos. The iPhone is just the latest example, and of course they have to make Apple happy to gain access to the customers. Apple in turn must satisfy their telco partners.

If we look at the (earlier) mobile client for J2ME (which also runs on Symbian), and the 3 Skypephone and INQ1 we see another strange pattern. The IM and presence works via the IP-data channel, but when you make a call it does a call-through via GSM to a local gateway. So there the telcos are being placated because voice calls are still connected using the good-old PSTN. In the case of 3, the billing system is fixed up to make "Skype to Skype" calls free to the user. The telcos are happy to work with this model, especially when the user starts roaming and extra charges can be added.

Reply from dean on Apr 13, 2009 - 12:35 PM

Looks like there's a possibility that the EU Commission will step in to regulate:-

Quote:

When the EU Commission in Brussels, one observes the development with suspicion. Die neue Telekomrichtlinie, über die Kommission, Europaparlament und Mitgliedstaaten gerade verhandeln, soll dafür sorgen, kostenlosen Diensten wie Skype den Weg zu ebnen. The new telecom directive, the Commission, European Parliament and Member States are negotiating to ensure free services like Skype to pave the way. Allerdings sind die Formulierungen des Entwurfs noch „nicht so eindeutig, wie wir uns das wünschen“, heißt es im Umfeld von EU-Telekom-Kommissarin Viviane Reding.

http://translate.google.co.uk/translate ... 26hs%3DyCy

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