Skype Announces Skype For Business
conq writes "Skype has launched a new offensive to go after small business dollars. From the BusinessWeek article: 'The company is unveiling Skype for Business, aimed at small companies with fewer than 10 employees, on Mar. 9. Skype for Business will include a new Web site, Skype.biz, as well as a host of features and hardware. While Skype has introduced features appealing to business users one by one for the past six months, the new announcement marks the beginning of a concerted effort.'"
We signed up with Skype to test it out - it took WEEKS to get set up, although our payment cleared immediately. We never recieved real response in the way of customer service, so we moved to NetZero's VOIP - it was set up within minutes, has always worked and calls anywhere.
Skype = Hype.
Encrypted VOIP will be damn nigh impossible to tax or regulate. Encrypted traffic is just encrypted data; and there is no way to know what it is without decrypting it. Which, depending on the encryption algorithm, may well take a long, long time and is not even certain to produce anything useful {since any given cyphertext could be the result of any one of a large number of plaintext/key pairs}.
Skype is reckoned to be encrypted, but this claim cannot be verified, as the source code is not available for perusal; it must be assumed that at least Skype themselves, and possibly The Authorities, have the power to listen to Skype calls.
SIP or IAX over SSL/TLS would be much more secure, since these are open protocols and the only secret is the encryption key.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!