First off, in case you don’t know, Skype is a Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) service that lets you chat for free from any PC to any other PC with an internet connection. You just have to have the Skype software on both systems. After that you just click on their name and you can have a call. You can also have a text chat or a conference call with up to 5 people.
Skype is the best solution out there. When communicating with my web development team in Mumbai India I had many opportunities to use skype and the other major PC-to-PC VOIP options. I used Yahoo, MSN and GoogleTalk trying to get the very best connection possible. You just can’t get further away than India. It has an 11 hour and 30 minute time difference from Utah (12 hours and 30 minutes during daylight savings). Plus our team in India frequently had bandwidth and latency problems with their Internet connection. So many times we tried all 4 clients on a single night to get the very best sound quality possible. No other solution even came close to the call quality that Skype offers. Google talk was the very worst! Yahoo was pretty good and in second place.
Over the last year I would guess that I have spent 250 hours speaking with my team in India. Many of those on conference calls with 4-5 people (several from India and several from the US). The conference call feature works perfectly. Anyone can talk and there are no duplexing problems (ok rarely). I would say that 95% of those calls where crystal clear with no noticeable latency. We did have a few problems when the connection was very slow. Also I had a bad cable modem at home and continually got dropped from calls until I was able to replace my modem. But that was a hardware problem. I never once found the problems to be with the Skype system and never found the service unavailable.
The call quality is incredible. I use a stereo headset with a built in microphone. The calls come through in both speakers and make the calls sound in stereo. The quality is better than any phone I have ever used. Better than a cell phone (that’s not hard) and even better than a land line.
Tonight I tried to talk to my friend Gulshan in Mumbai and could not connect using our normal PC-to-PC method. It is a holiday there and everyone must be on their PCs sucking up all the bandwidth. So I tried the “Call Phones” feature. I added $10 to my skype account and used the skype software on my PC to dial his mobile phone in Mumbai. We spoke for over 40 minutes and the sound quality was great. Much better than if I had called him on my cell phone. Also the 40-minute call cost less than $7! I was very happy with this service and will use it again (I have to use up my last $3).
You can also get a phone number from skype that would allow a regular phone to call you on your PC. I have not had a need for this yet but I can see how it may be useful. It is simply much more convenient to talk with a headset connected to your PC than to talk on a cell phone. It is easier to answer and to dial. It is also easier to keep track of your contacts. You can also get voicemail messages on your PC and you can even record your entire call and save it as an mp3 on your hard drive.
I think the phone companies should be worried and even the cell phone companies. As free Wi-fi continues to spread there will be more and more opportunities for services like Skype to flourish. The day someone figures out how to offer free wi-fi to everyone is the day that voip will rule the world. And it will be good for everyone.
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