I must admit I was a doubter. How could a PC based telephone conversation be as good as a land line?
Well, because I have a cousin in the UK and I wanted to make a call with minimum charges I decided to give Skype a try.
I signed up and put $10 in the pot because my cousin only has a land line. She doesn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t even have a PC! On Christmas Day I called over there and what a surprise. The call went through as fast or faster than any call I had made before. Not only a fast connection but the clarity of the call was also equal to my land line experience. Another call a few days later, I had the same experience. Then came the shock, forty five minutes of calls and my pot was down a measly $1.20!
Now I am a believer. Go Skype!
1. Posted by: Charbax on January 11, 2006 7:43 AM:
Skype is slow, hi-jacks fast internet connections and steal its bandewidth for proxying file-transfers for people behind firewalls and transmitting communications without asking:
http://gigaom.com/2006/01/10/skype-the-bandwidth-hog/
It's proprietary, which means hardware you might want to buy for Skype only works for skype, makes a mess of your sound settings hi-jacks your sound card, is incompatible with cheap voice-over-IP hardware and only works with skype software. It also means your voice conversation is maybe spied on by the CIA or anyone which skype company chooses, cause nobody knows what the skype software really does, especially since it connects to fast proxies without asking. That's why skype is illegal by Government people in for example France and China, they can use SIP if they want, skype is just not allowed because of its proprietary protocol.
SIP is an open voice-over-IP protocol, it's much better. There are hundreds of SIP providers in every country. You can for example get a phone number in England which your cousin can call you at and you can answer with a cheap and awesome hardware SIP phone in wherever country you are. It means hundreds of SIP providers can compete on providing the cheapest call rates to every country and lots of features exist like voicemail, call forwarding to your mobile, having lots of phone numbers from many countries for very cheap price per number per month (less than 1$) or to get free numbers in some countries UK and USA for example.