Hello Dina,

It has been quite a while that I have been reading your posts at the Skypejournal...and there were a few times when I wanted to comment, however unesteemed it might be, but then backed off. But this time I really wanted to.

I dont know that what you personally think about Skype's plans for a market like India. I was pretty impressed with the voice quality when I used it for the first time in September last year. And quite naturally so, as my previous experience was the yahoo voice chat option. But I forgot that my first impression had an implicit factor: me (in Stockholm) and my buddy (at Princeton University) were on broadband connections.

For the next 2 months I tried to bring my friends in India, who were using yahoo, into the skype world...and failed, miserably. I even called PSTN lines and mobile numbers but the call quality was aweful...nothing could be more irritating than the fact that you have to repeat yourself 3 times when you are talking to your family being far far away from them...same for skype to skype calls...most of the time the audio would break up either from a cybercafe or on a residential dial-up connection.

So while you might be right about potential skype users at BPOs, matrimonial portals...but for average users, like my family back home, a critical factor would be the high speed connection. I even made posts at the skype forum requesting introduction of skypeIn for India and lower skypeout rates...for students like me and those huge population of NRIs who talk to their family using calling cards and stuff from abroad...but unless broadband penetration increases in India 'Nicke' Zennstrom (thanks to Ben Isacsson for that nickname) and his band of brothers will not be looking at India as a market.

Hi Sanks, good to see you at SkypeJournal and am glad you jumped in with your views. Keep the conversations going !!

I live in Bombay and yes, I do have a decent connection at home, and I use Skype, SkypeIn and SkypeOut extensively with clients and friends/family. And it works well.

But I also travel a lot on work and have erratic connections, sometimes a dial-up, sometimes using a Reliance CDMA phone as a modem, and I have managed to speak to people on Skype and make calls to cell phones in the US on that connection as well. Not always perfect of course, but enough to communicate quite fluidly.

Moreover, cell phones are really changing the way we communicate. Price of GPRS and CDMA connections are coming down day by day, and when used as modems, they work pretty well. Since I got my Reliance phone, I see no need to struggle with really lazy dial-up connections. And it costs me about 12 USD a month with a bar on 1 GB downloads, which is more than sufficient for using it as my modem.

There are enough indicators that broadband connections too are going to increase, and pretty soon. If not through cables, it will be wireless even in remote areas. I agree that it is one of the large factors that will determine the success of Skype in countries like India. It is coming and my hope is that Skype must get their act going for India, as the market potential is huge.