Skype Hype Is Tripe
Greg Ritter,
Ten Reasons Why,
Sept 25, 2003
Greg Ritter offers some comments about my recent comparison between Skype, the free VoIP software being distributed by Kazaa, and the VoIP system being installed at Dartmouth. He writes, "Stephen and the bazillion other people writing about Skype and Dartmouth are conflating computer-to-computer VoIP with real internet telephony... Skype's VoIP is not Internet telephony. What the Dartmouth system has, that Skype does not, is an interface between the IP network and the dedicated circuit telephone network." Ritter also suggests that Skype will, at some point, connect to the ancient and overpriced traditional telephone network, and that's when "Skype ceases to be free." Well maybe - it may cost a Skype user to connect to the older system, but there is no reason to levy a fee for an IP-to-IP call. And Skype - now sitting at more than 800,000 downloads - is gaining market share even without this feature. And you do not need to, as Ritter suggests, be "tied to the computer (and a Windows computer at that) and limited to computer-to-computer calls" - IP telephony functionality can easily be added to any of a number of mobile internet devices.
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