Telepocalypse

SkypeOut: Not good enough

At my in-laws here in snowy and overcast Vilnius, Lithuania.

Their DSL connection is only 256kbit/128kbit, but does me fine for most of what I need to do. And it's fairly cheap -- about US$13/month for 6Gb. (Although French readers will be snickering at this point...)

I find Skype-to-Skype calls work just fine from here. Although it's terrible to configure with a USB headset, BT Communicator makes great-sounding calls to the UK. But SkypeOut? Forget it. Novelty value only.

I'm consistently finding the same at home too in Scotland, with a much meatier Net connection. And in the USA. This is getting to be more than anecdotal.

There's a branding tension between the "free" part of Skype and the "better" part which shows up here. They've aligned SkypeOut with the "cheap" side. In their own words on the home page (my highlights):

You can call anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world for free. And you’ll always be able to do that. There are some other useful things you can do on Skype that aren’t free (but they’re pretty cheap, actually).

And on the next page:

That’s why we have SkypeOut, a low cost way to make calls from Skype to friends who still use those traditional landlines or mobile phones. That means calling anyone, anywhere in the world at local rates.

Not a single mention of clarity or quality. Spot the open goal into which some competitors might kick the ball?

So they're positioning themselves as a price leader, which is kind of tough when they generally aren't. And it isn't a very attractive business proposition either. There are much bigger players with global networks and zillions of minutes who can probably buy wholesale cheaper than you. And do you really want to boast to your investors and owners that your aim is to raise as little revenue as you can get away with? There's always someone else willing to offer a lower rate and ever worse experience.

But the thing that attracted me to Skype originally was that it was better as well as free. The presence, IM and file transfer made it irresistable to many SOHO/small biz workers like me. The wideband audio makes for a more personal feeling when talking to colleagues and clients -- the distance fades away from the mind. Why complement the best on-net call quality around with a lousy PSTN experience? We'll pay for quality, really!

SkypeIn seems to works OK. I know it isn't the connection itself that's at fault. Please, make this product work properly!

Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:12 PM

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At my in-laws here in snowy and overcast Vilnius, Lithuania. Their DSL connection is only 256kbit/128kbit, but does me fine for most of what I need to do. And it’s fairly cheap — about US$13/month for 6Gb. (Although French readers... [Read more]

Tracked on February 21, 2006 2:33 AM