zaterdag 19 maart 2005

Changing world

No comments necessary other than that this happened in a Canadian hotel lobby, but could (and does) happen anywhere.

"This morning . . . I heard a distinctive "ring ring" sound that any Skype user would recognize. What followed was a 25 minute long conversation in Hebrew. I asked a collegue of the guy, "Skype?", nod of head yes, "To Israel?", nod of head yes, "it's changing the world", nod of head yes. 25 minutes, and no landline, wireless, or international carrier got a penny."

2 opmerkingen:

  1. Yme,

    I'm so curious what the impact of Skype in mobile telephony is, currently the price of the data connection is higher than the cost savings you can generate on your phone calls. Maybe the israeli you mentioned had another way of making it interesting to use.

    With the drop of UMTS data charges this could still become very very interesting.

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  2. Well, the Israeli was using it over free WiFi of course, that makes it more compelling from a cost perspective.

    A drop in mobile data charges would be very welcome, but I still don't think it will do very much for Skype in mobile telephony on the short term. The benefits won't outway the difficulties of using Skype (or VoIP in general) on a mobile phone.

    A drop of data charges will do a lot however for IM on a mobile phone, already much cheaper than SMS/MMS and not that difficult to use... And if everyone's using IM, the spep towards VoIP won't be difficult....

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