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Skype's Sale As Media Feint
ansak writes "Bob Cringely's latest article shows evidence that some aspects of the 90s bubble are indeed back: Why would Rupert Murdoch think of paying $3billion for a mostly free online service like Skype? But his last line shows a keen understanding of Murdoch's skills and methods: 'By putting Skype in play, he distracts for no money at all most of the major media companies. And while they try to figure out how to respond to VoIP, old Rupert will be attacking them on some completely other front. He'll be stealing their shoes.'"
I've been thinking about VOIP as a way of ditching my landline. Switch from
$80/mo for landline, local calls, and DSL/ISP
to
$20/mo for cable modem
$16/mo for most basic cable
$16/mo for Vonage VOIP
Total $52/mo, and I get more TV than I got before,
have a phone line in the house (I use my cell more anyway), and prepare myself for the next great thing....Netflix trickle download to TiVO in about 6 months.
Really, I've paid WAY too much for DSL for the last 5 years, in about a week I'm gonna tell the bells I don't need their landline. Its gonna be an interesting phone call to say the least.
But this comes back to the value of Skype...my Italian colleague here in the states talks to his Dad for free every morning at 5AM (our time). That is an unreal technology. Now, he wouldn't talk to his old man so much if it was not free, but it is, and his phone usage would be over $100/mo on landlines, free on Skype.
My other colleague (a Canadian/Israeli double citizen) uses Skype as her landline. Her laptop goes everywhere with her, and she is on broadband about 3/4 of the time, reachable on her Skype phone line.
The phone company landlines are challengeable by VOIP, for a tiny fraction of the cost since the user provides the "last mile" access over broadband. Its a great business model, and I expect Vonage and Skype to make a mint - those two Scandanavians that started Skype are gonna be even richer....
This sector is really interesting and heating up. Skype is not a standard, so Skype can only talk to Skype and they are trying to create their own version of what they consider internet telephony to be, a bit like MSN in the early days of the net. What the potential valuations of Skype do not look into are what they actually offer. Some here have already pointed out that free messenger services such as MSN and Yahoo! already offer voice, at better quality, so what is it that skype does other than link phone numbers to skype usernames? This is a perfect scenario for an open source application to make use of an open standard such as SIP (Which is compatible with a lot of hardware, and existing voip networks) and to create a multi-platform consumer product that provides zero lock-in (as skype does).
These telephony apps are the browsers for the voice internet, so nothing less than a full browser war would be expected. Hence the reason why incompatible applications such as skype will die away as newer and better open source applications that can inter-operate are released and taken up. I would even speculate that a voip client ('browser') would be much easier to develop than an open source web browser, and I think it is high time that the open source crowds jumps in to promote and develop the alternatives to these nasty commercial applications.