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Businesses Discover Skype
prostoalex writes "Businesses are starting to pay closer attention to Skype as executives discover that VoIP application can cut the long distance and international call costs. News.com mentions two companies - Aruba Wireless Networks and Ruhrpumpen. The former placed a Skype button on its Web page, the latter put the Skype usernames in its intranet employee directory."
i recently visited the bristish virgin islands, and saw an insurance company there using skype for internal calls and external long distance.
Posting a Skype link on their website is brave, to say the least. It costs no money or effort to call through Skype, so there is nothing to stop any random browser from calling them up just for laughs.
We have a geographically diverse team from (ranging from west coast US, east coast US, South Africa and India). We use Skype for our weekly conference calls. The audio quality is much better than telco lines (most of the time).
All the worlds indeed a
Demonstrate to him that it will significantly lower his bills. If you can prove that standing on his head and clucking like a chicken will cut costs, he'll do it with a smile on his face. The way to the boss's heart is and always will be through his wallet.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Now if I could explain why the Skype client tries to connect to lots of shady looking addresses (dhcp/DSL, in various countries etc) when I launch it in OSX, I'm sure I'd give it another try...
Until then, I'll just declare it spyware.
A link with your Skype Username in your webpage is a good move, like using your email or msn contact.
If I want to call help desk support in Europe I can do it.
The problem are the jokes, but we have spam too, right?
ajf
If you want to avoid vendor lockin then skype is not a good way to go for business.
There are a great many VOIP systems out there that proper transparent PBX systems (like asterisk but with the support contracts basically), and they use the open SIP format so you're not tied to a single manufacturer. Does your boss want a crappy USB headeset of a full featured Cisco phone?
I am always happy to see an original idea catch on, but I think the bigger story is VoIP in general, especially the ones (vonage, cable co's) that make it look and feel exactly like the service people are used to - plain 'ol telephone service.
I made the prediction that VoIP would be obsoleted by drops in traditional telephone service, but I was wrong. Basic phone service, with minimal long distance service, still costs $50+ here.
The biggest problem right now is that Skype may not be integrated into the local PBX. But the Skype people seem smart and my guess is they will come up with something soon.
Siemens itself seems to have an eye on them.
13-4=54/6
Exactly. I'm about to do the switch to VoIP at home because it will be a lot cheaper. 18$ for the base and 1.9 cents a minute (canadian $), versus > 65$ for limited long distance, and you pay for the whole long distance plan whether you use it or not. I'd have to talk over like 2500 minutes to pay the same using VoIP. And there's a lot of other advantages.
For companies, costs are much higher. We lease some phone switches from the local telco for over a million a pop, plus the ones we already own. That's major $$ if you ask me. Add leased lines and local lines, and the bill is that much higher (especially we already pay for a OC3... plenty to add some VoIP traffic).
You could use some cheap asterix boxes (especially if you compare to the price of leasing a PBX), but then again there's the price of replacing the phones (can be rather costly, do the math). Replacing all the infrastructure would be expensive at first, but after that, going with some cheap VoIP provider for outgoing calls would cut a LOT into monthly bills.
///<sig
skype uses a cheap trick of routing calls between users through other user's computers (turning them into supernodes). a number of people, I included have experienced hearing others speak through my computer. This is inspite of skype's claim to the contrary.- blog/skype-security.asp.
check this out http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/voip/voip
A casual search on the net will reveal a lot more.
The problem is not something that can be fixed with a simple patch. there will be more problems in the future too.
The primary problem with using skype for business and carrier grade work is that it's protocol is not public. we don't know how it works, we don't have any assurance that we are not being heard by skype guys as we talk.
The purpose of all philosophers was to impress women
The trouble is that business people tend to use credit cards, and that something that Skype is not very good at. Another thing they are not very good at is allowing is his people to avoid paying VAT tax on phone calls. Seeing I'm in Holland and can deduct local VAT, I'm hardly inclined to pay Luxemburg VAT.
But the main problem remains that anyone using a Visa and anyone in Spain, to mention but a few, can't pay for their SkypeOut... and just to confuse people, sometimes they can and sometimes they can't, using the same card.
All very weird.
Rgds
Martin
Recently, a friend of mine moved offices and got his business cards reprinted. Instead of the average numbers (Office, Mobile, Fax), he now has Office, Mobile, Fax, Skype and MSN contact details listed there.
.PDF file.
.PDF to this email address, with the phone number of recipient in the subject line.
Whats more, is that his Office number is actually a VoIP number with a provider we have here in Sydney. Also, his fax line doesn't actually go to a fax, but rather a service that forwards the fax digitally to his email inbox as a
If he wants to send a fax, he simply emails a
Talk about a digital office. It also means that he can do business with his laptop and a internet connection.
Back when I was at the university, a student in the distributed systems lecture asked the professor about voip. This was in 1997, so the prof replied: "Why would you want to do this? Use the phone." The student said that this would be much cheaper, like a local phone call. The prof said that the university pays something like DEM 1 million per year for their internet connection. If the student used voip, this would just shift costs.
I've often wondered about why voip can be cheaper. At the very least, when you're using the phone, you're paying for what you get. When people are using voip, this will still use the bandwidth, but you are shifting costs onto everyone else (at least onto the backbone providers).
Can someone point me to a study that voip is really cheaper (more efficient) than conventional telephoning?
Lars
Now, when our server crashes, our phones go out.
:-)
Other way round here: the PCs NICs are connected to the phone (Siemens system). When the phone goes down, the network connection is down, too.