Don't get me wrong, I love Skype. It's saved me a fortune, and is way more convenient than the alternatives.

But sometimes it lets me down. Yesterday, I was expecting an important SkypeIn call at 4pm. Never came. I was online, for sure. Finished work after 5pm.

This morning when I log on at 3am (hello jetlag), I get the voicemail from that person -- timed at 4.15pm yesterday. So it never rang, and I didn't get notification of the voicemail. Annoying.

I've also had problems with conference call quality at times. SkypeOut isn't as good as BT's VoIP voice quality. SkypeIn is generally pretty good though.

What this is telling me is that the field is wide open for competition in the small-medium business space. And a telco brand could be just as good as an Internet one. I don't mind paying for business-class quality -- I just need something that works at a reasonable price. There are additional feature like web conferencing (synchronised Powerpoint, desktop sharing) that need to be in there too.

PS - Downloaded Sightspeed this morning. Looks like a nice product, but they make the users jump through far too many hoops to get going.

You can miss Martin just as often at the Telepocalypse.