What of the potential benefits resulting from plans for Skype integration into Microsoft’s business-class communication products, such as Lync? That remains a mystery, and calls into question the level of commitment that Microsoft will make to open standards and to widespread integration.
Is the acquisition good for Skype? Given the valuation, it’s certainly good for the Skype shareholders. But what about the service itself? In a word, no. History suggests that Microsoft’s tendency towards notoriously proprietary tactics will slow the development of Skype as a business tool. Will Microsoft wall-off Skype from competing products, completely? Or, at a bare minimum will Microsoft ensure their products work much better with Skype than those from competitors? Time will tell.
That was May 13th, the Wednesday after the announcement. Now, eleven days later, some news via email.
Product notification:
Skype for Asterisk will not be available for sale or activation after July 26, 2011.
Skype for Asterisk was developed by Digium in cooperation with Skype. It includes proprietary software from Skype that allows Asterisk to join the Skype network as a native client. Skype has decided not to renew the agreement that permits us to package this proprietary software. Therefore Skype for Asterisk sales and activations will cease on July 26, 2011.
This change should not affect any existing users of Skype for Asterisk. Representatives of Skype have assured us that they will continue to support and maintain the Skype for Asterisk software for a period of two years thereafter, as specified in the agreement with Digium. We expect that users of Skype for Asterisk will be able to continue using their Asterisk systems on the Skype network until at least July 26, 2013. Skype may extend this at their discretion.
Skype for Asterisk remains for sale and activation until July 26, 2011. Please complete any purchases and activations before that date.
Thank you for your business.
Digium Product Management
I think it’s simple housecleaning on Skype’s part. Skype for Asterisk has little usage, is redundant with existing and future Skype products, and offers no revenue to speak of. Former Skype Journal anchor Jim Courtney IM’d this was probably in the works before the Microsoft deal.
I’m a regular visitor to the Voipuser’s conference – which is a weekly conference call about VoIP. The call is hosted on ZipDX’s wideband conference bridge. The quality of the guests combined with the HD audio on the bridge means that the recordings make decent pod casts.
For about a year now, we have been running a Skype gateway so that people who couldn’t or didn’t have time to set up a SIP device could call in (free) via skype.
Like most conference calls, it works best with a text back channel so that URLs, part numbers, email addresses etc. don’t need to be laboriously spelled out. For historical reasons this is an IRC channel on freenode.net. So a typical user would have a softphone fired up on their laptop for the audio and an IRC client for the text.
Skype users are very loyal to skype chat, so a few weeks ago I started looking at trying to bring the IRC chat to them in a more convenient way. Last week I got an experimental system running that did just that. Here is a sample of the result:
A skype chat bridged to gtalk via irc.
In some ways that looks like an ordinary skype chat. Indeed for the skype user, that is exactly how it behaves, except that messages from the vuc.me user are in fact from multiple IRC users.
If you look a little more carefully, you’ll see that there is discussion of a gtalk connection (google talk). That’s because I’d also made the system support connections from gtalk too.
So users from all three of the ‘islands’ in the VoIP world (SIP, Skype and GoogleTalk) could all participate on an equal basis in a conference about VoIP. Not only that, but their IM messages were also exchanged freely, all with the correct attribution.
How was this done?
Asterisk is the key ‘glue’ here, with it’s support for Skype and Gtalk channels. But even Asterisk doesn’t support the kind of gatewaying we needed for the IRC . For that we needed the (excellent) asterisk-java package which communicates with Asterisk and allows you to manage and control calls in Java. I used the PircBot package to implement an IRC connection in Java.
As this was a prototype, I didn’t want to get bogged down in writing the gateway in Java, I wanted to use something more expressive and easier on the keyboard, so I used Groovy.
The end result was a very few lines of Groovy, here is the meat of it (sorry Jay) :
Now the fun and powerful thing about this code is that it is asynchronous and event driven. Each event from Asterisk is checked to see if it triggers any of our desired actions, but this triggering is done on a fine grain – in the last block we are only interested in Skype chat messages that are to the skype id ‘vuc.me’. We can write expressive filters in code to do the matching, then define the action to carry out in just a few lines. The over all effect is like the syntax of unix’s AWK pattern matching language.
This is quite different from the kind of scripting you see in twilio, asterisk dialplan, tropo and other telephony scripting environments. They are all about call control, this is about call enhancement. A traditional telephony scripting language sets up the call, but once the 2 (or more) parties are talking they step out of the way. Here I’m adorning a live call with extra asynchronous information.
There are systems that do this sort of adornment – ZIP DX sends messages to the SIP clients throughout a call allowing phones to display the name of the current speaker – but that’s more of an endpoint feature (see also the very cool thrutu). In this case the adornment is taking place in the middle of the network and in the middle of the call – and that’s new (at least to me).
I’ll be polishing the prototype and hopefully have it deployed in a stable basis in time for next Friday’s VUC.
Take a look at Tim Panton’s tale of how Digium brought developers into its plans for a scalable Asterisk. Early and ongoing inclusion. Taking their priorities seriously. Announcing to developers before the press. Tim contrasts this with Skype’s rough treatment of Nimbuzz and Fring. Dan York points out a key phrase: "Look after all of your developers and your developers will look after you." Post-IPO, Skype’s developer relations program will have to work long and hard to earn trust and respect. They’re preparing and eager.
He’s in a wave. Adds a gadget. Passes a Skype name to a gadget. Browser-to-Skype call starts.
They talk. As each person talks for a bit, their bit is encoded and linked-to.
So you have a play-by-play record of a call.
Inside a Google wave.
Under the covers: Jason Goecke said "it is a Google Wave Gadget with his PhoneFromHere.com IAX2 Java softphone as the client. Then, the IAX2 Java phone connects to Asterisk with Skype for Asterisk installed. Then, there is a server-side element, Ibook, that is breaking apart utterances into individual files. So that as each person speaks, it captures it into its own file. Then, as that happens, a text frame is sent from Asterisk to the softphone with the file details. The gadget then uses some Javascript to embed a link. IAX2 supports text frames."
This is cool (like I really had to tell you).
First, it shows what it’s like to build Skype calls into other applications. Without a Skype client running. (Pardon my drooling.)
Second, it deconstructs a long talk into directly referenceable snippets. (Still needs permalinks in addition to the playable links). This means you can annotate live calls with transcripts, pictures, etc. So the call’s Binary Large Object becomes binary tiny objects.
Third, because the snippets are referred to by a wave, other gadgets and bots can enhance the archive. Add or remove background noise. Translate and provide voiceovers in your language. Highlight statistically improbable phrases. Detect stress in a voice. Visualize the data in a timeline or a relationship scorecard (who talked more?). Add tags to help you find this wave again.
Fourth, no phone numbers were called in the making of this demo. Phone companies weren’t bothered. Internet all the way.
Fifth, because this is within the context of a wave, it should be possible to use wave member data to lookup Skype names and bring people into an open conference room.
Skype For Asterisk "is available to download now from Digium for $66 USD per concurrent call or from Digium Authorized Resellers and Distributors worldwide, and comes with 90 days of installation support from the time of purchase."
Om interviews Brad Garlinghouse, formerly the Yahoo! exec who owned Yahoo! Messenger, lately an in-house advisor at Silver Lake Partners (soon to own 50%+ of Skype), and soon to be president of AOL’s email and AIM service. Interop with Skype is on the table. Mmmmm, peanut butter!
Exabytes per month worldwide in our mobile broadband future. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes. How much will be people lifestreaming video? Skype video multicasting?
First, Skype plans to formalize and extend its premium (prioritized queue, private resources) online customer support for enterprises and to deliver local language, in-country customer support through channel partners.
Last, Stefan said survey results show Skype is making its way into US and UK workplaces.
hmmm. "The future of business communications" is a pretty big scope.
Not much new about the consumerization of IT. Been going on for generations. Mobile phones were smuggled in. Wi-Fi, Macs, even PCs were first brought to work by employees. Here’s a 2005 Gartner release saying "Consumerization Will Be Most Significant Trend Affecting IT During Next 10 Years."
Tough times call for desperate measures. Even "consumer grade" tools will do if they save lots of money.
We do have lots of connectivity, for now. Good enough for Skype video calls.
Not just by IT employees but by everyone. Darned employees, using strange software and connectivity in ways we didn’t plan.
We have one life, and we spend it at home, at school, and working. Our tools are becoming closer to us, less tied to or provided by our employers.
Presence will be matter when people stop lying about their availability. Skype’s presence service only lets you set one presence message for everyone. Yet you might be available to your best customer and not available for Bob from the accounting department.
More stats…
Oh, and Skype Lite is coming out for the Blackberry this month.
Harder questions: What percent of smartphone users in the UK and US have ever downloaded an application? What percentage of smartphones sold in the US and UK will come with Skype preloaded?
Less integrated than bolted on or sitting next to your existing workflow. With a few limited exceptions, you cannot build Skype into an enterprise application. Unless you consider Outlook an enterprise workflow app.
Of the nine applications shown above, five were made by Skype, and three were made by one Skype developer. Not exactly a robust ecosystem.
The "tools" talking points are real accomplishments, although far from complete. Skype offers a version specifically for easy configuration (networking options and feature crippling) by IT. The readable admin guide to Skype has been useful in explaining how to make Skype installations conform to company security policies and assert control over users. Skype’s business control panel is a first stab at letting companies manage user accounts and distribute account funds.
"Enhanced service" as used here means customer service and technical support. Interoperability, well, Skype’s not there yet but it’s nice to hear executives acknowledge it as an opportunity.
The closing slides say Skype is good wherever you work (office, travelling, at home).
Critique: A friend in the audience told me it was too salesy for the Interop IT crowd. Everyone there knew Skype already and they generally appreciate live demos more than PowerPoint. I tend to agree. The best parts of the talk were the hard numbers and the real world stories of companies putting Skype to work. Using real company names and showing photos or video of people using the tools at work would have been more meaningful.
Ars Technica: Analysis: IT consumerization and the future of work(2008). "’IT consumerization’ is one of the more unwieldy buzzwords to come down the pike in some time, which is a shame, because there’s definitely something to it. Here’s a look at three factors that contribute to the IT consumerization trend, and at what this trend may mean for the future of how we work."
Now that I’ve made my point and spent last 15 minutes hyper linking the references above, what I am trying to get at is how easy Skype has made itself to users of all walks. Being that this company has made its service completely platform agnostic, it has tremendous power to reach a wide range of users and become the de facto internet-based communications tool. I can’t think of another IM or VOIP application with this broad reach across various hardware and software.
As for my family, Skype has been an indispensable tool when traveling abroad. Given all the available Skype options, we can easily keep in touch so long as internet is available never having to worry about having pre-paid SIM or phone cards.
Skype, in my opinion, may be the best mobile communication provider for a non telecom operator. Of course, with Gmail’s Video and VOIP support over browser recently launched, it can pose a potential threat to Skype’s territory as it would technically be platform agnostic. But until mobile browsers are powerful enough to take advantage, Skype is still much ahead of the game. Way to go Skype!
Now that Skype is coming to the enterprise with Skype for Asterisk and Skype for SIP, they will need to enhance the data available for their calling rates. Enabling Least Cost Routing (LCR) is a must for any VoIP provider to the enterprise. LCR allows a phone system to determine, on a call by call basis, which VoIP provider to use based on the best rates associated to the country code or prefix being dialed.
As of now Skype publishes a web page of calling rates based on the country name and the per minute rate including or excluding the tax. A few additional items are needed to make this usable for LCR systems:
The associated country code for each country (i.e. – ‘34′ for Spain, ‘1′ for the US, etc)
More granular prefixes where calling rates may differ (i.e. – ‘346′ for Spanish mobiles, ‘336′ for French mobiles, ‘1212′ for NYC, ‘1712′ for Iowa, etc)
Billing intervals
A file download in CSV, or similar format, for import into LCR systems
Of course, in the meantime it is easy enough to scrape the website and convert the available data into a more appropriate format. Here is an example, in Ruby, of how this may be done in a trivial way:
You may then perform a Regular Expression against another data source to derive the appropriate country codes/prefixes and store those in your LCR system. A good example of the additional detail needed is provided by Flowroute.
I have on my list of actions to create an Adhearsion component to provide LCR capabilities for any Adhearsion application. The plan is to support a wide number of VoIP providers and other data inputs as a part of this plug-in.
In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how Skype goes about publishing their rates with additional details and formats for download.
UPDATE@JimCanuck points out it is not just about least cost, but also about quality of termination. Skype has some interesting approaches to call quality. More here.
Today Skype announced Skype for SIP (SFS). Put simply, enterprise telephone systems may now interconnect with the Skype network to receive calls from the Skype network and place calls to SkypeOut. All without the need to install any special hardware or software on most modern enterprise phone systems (IP-PBXs to be more specific). Skype’s new enterprise targeted connectivity uses SIP, the industry standard for VoIP interconnection. SIP already powers the bulk of Skype’s revenue, via SkypeIn/SkypeOut, so this is a logical progression to take advantage of the large scale infrastructure already in place at Skype.
This is a tremendous move by Skype and one I have contended for years was necessary for them to make headway in the enterprise. I applaud this step. There are plenty of great posts out there covering this already, including the one by @danyork on Disruptive Telephony.
Previously SIP interconnection to the Skype cloud was given to the rarified group of larger players such as Voxeo, Tellme, Genesys and others. SFA was the first time this access was going to be brought to the world of open source telephony developers through Asterisk. This provided an immense opportunity for the Asterisk developer community to create new applications to take advantage of this, which lead me to invest time to participate in the closed beta for SFA still underway.
The SFS announcement this morning has just marginalized SFA to applications that benefit from direct dialing of Skype users from Asterisk and from basic presence updates from the Skype network. Gone are the benefits of providing Skype/SkypeIn inbound calls to the enterprise, SkypeOut trunking, etc. More so, SFA is at a disadvantage since you will have to pay a per channel (simultaneous call) license fee on top of any SkypeIn/SkypeOut costs. Further, I suspect that the number of SFA channels available to a single account will be limited for the same reason that SFS does not do SIP to Skype dialing, so that no one may provide large scale alternatives to SkypeIn.
All of this has really taken the wind out of the SFA sails before it even had a chance to make it to a public beta. Digium must now look to quickly add new features. Such as advanced presence information, instant messaging, the SILK codec and others, if they hope to salvage their own investment in the development of SFA to date. While I understand these things take time, the lethargy of getting the SFA to market does not bode well for rapidly trumping the SFS announcement.
Skype-Name-to-SIP-Address. Skype for Business users map one Skype name to one IP address. So people can Skype your Skype name but your SIP PBX rings.
SIP-Switch-to-SkypeOut. Use SkypeOut for all the calls going out of your SIP telephone system. Billed at Skype’s typical per-minute rates: higher than what you can buy in bulk, much cheaper than what you get from your local phone company.
Both are controlled through the Skype.com web site and setting on your telephone switch. Business Control Panels let organizations distribute money to multiple Skype accounts.
Between the two parts, SFS gives Skype an excuse to get in front of small business telecom buyers. It offers cost savings and predictability on outbound calling. It provides simple routing of incoming Skype calls to your call center. No hardware beyond your SIP PBX. No software to install. You don’t even need to use Skype.
SFS is the second workplace product Skype is launching this year. Skype For Asterisk (SFA), still in closed Beta testing, is Asterisk add-on software running on your Asterisk telephone switch. SFA gives your phone switch the ability to send and recognize Skype instant messages and presence. SFA also lets programmers integrate Skype into other Asterisk programs, like phone trees and speech recognition.
Distribution.
SFS will be distributed on Skype.com and by Skype "service partners", local firms that install and repair phone systems. Service partners will receive commissions from Skype on minutes purchased by customers they refer to Skype. Skype will send referrals to authorized service partners.
Skype does not have a service partner network now. A 2007 project tried to distribute Skype for Business starter packs.
The Strategic Opportunity.
Skype For SIP home page on launch day, 23 March 2009
Skype is opening doors with SFS.
They’re setting up a distribution channel and meeting enterprise IT/telecom people. Skype’s brand may entitle it to sell Skype-flavored minutes at a premium. All of this should be good for Skype’s sales.
How big is the opportunity?
The normal VC math: 100 partners worldwide (could be 1000 easily) x 100 small companies per partner (could take time) x 1000 minutes/month (an extremely low number) * $0.20 per minute = $2 million/month. This run rate could grow easily to $20 million/month in a year.
That’s the quarter billion dollar per year upside.
The Strategic Downside.
The downside is huge.
Skype For SIP is barren of everything that makes Skype meaningful and invaluable in the workplace.
Skype is selling cheap, convenient minutes to enterprise plumbers. Legacy audio quality. No audio, video, conferencing, buddy lists, file sharing, presence, or software extensions. SFS is the commoditized low end of VoIP.
With SFS, Skype defines itself to the channel and to its business customers as a "value" provider, helping companies shave pennies, competing with the "minute stealer" industry. While there’s money to be had, Skype For SIP
This abandons Skype’s central tenets:
Be a live, realtime social network.
Enrich the quality of conversation through higher quality and multiple modes.
Build Skype Dial Tone by having more individuals log in for more time each day, earning network effects.
Be the tool people use for workplace collaboration and coordination.
Skype For SIP is a Skypeless product.
Nobody at a company which uses SFS needs to use Skype. Nobody needs to turn on a client or use an embedded Skype phone or download Skype Lite for a mobile.
In short: SFS undermines Skype’s brand.
Warnings for 2009.
No Emergency Calls. Calls to paramedics, police, and fire will not go through. Standard blocking by the Skype network. So configure your IP-PBX to keep a non-Skype connection open.
Security sucks. No encryption for now. A Skype spokesperson wrote "at the start of beta, we do not support encryption due to the lack of support among most IP-PBX vendors. We will be adding TLS (encrypted signaling) and SRTP (encrypted media) during the beta period."
ID Schism sucks. No way for users to tell if a Skype account is a "consumer" or a "business" or a robot account. No way to tell if a Skype user is seeing your IM or your presence or can see your video.
English-only. One language for the web site and documentation. No internationalization for a while.
Digital Identity Lifecycle sucks. No way to transfer a Skype account (in the event of M&A, personnel change, for example) or to integrate this with your network/server management systems.
Only One Skype ID per Company. So if you have more than one trademark, you’re out of luck. If you’ve already secured your trademarked Skype name, you’re in worse luck. Only Skype names created through the new service will work. This contradicts what a Skype source told Dan York.
New beta program brings Skype voice calling to SIP-based PBX systems
LUXEMBOURG, March 23, 2009 — Skype today announced the beta version of Skype For SIP for Business users. SIP, short for Session Initiation Protocol, is an open standard and the leadingvoice over Internet protocol used in businesses telephony networks at millions of locations globally. According to IDC, 438,000 IP PBXes were shipped worldwide in 2008.*
Skype For SIP allows SIP PBX owners to benefit from Skype’s low cost calls to fixed phones and mobiles around the world, and to receive calls from Skype users directly into their PBX system.
Businesses can now be reached by the community of over 405 million Skype registered users through click-to-call from their business Web sites. The calls will be received through their existing office system at no cost to the customer. At the same time, businesses can benefit from Skype’s low-cost global calling rates when placing calls to landlines and mobiles worldwide from devices connected to their PBX systems. In addition, they can choose to purchase online Skype numbers available in over 20 countries to receive calls from business contacts and customers who are using traditional fixed lines or mobile phones.
“The introduction of Skype for SIP is a significant move for Skype and for any communication intensive business around the world,” said Stefan Oberg, VP and General Manager of Skype for Business. “It effectively combines the obvious cost savings and reach of Skype with its large user base, with the call handling functionality, statistics and integration capabilities of traditional office PBX systems, providing great economical savings and increased productivity for the modern business.”
"Businesses have been waiting for Skype to make a concerted push into the business space for a while,” said Rebecca Swensen, IDC’s Research Analyst, Enterprise Mobility and IP Communications Services. “Connecting to existing standards-based SIP PBXes is a good way for Skype to start doing so. It will be interesting to see how large companies change their thinking about the deployment of Skype within the network.”
Key Features
The beta version of Skype For SIP will enable business users to:
Receive and manage inbound calls from Skype users worldwide on SIP-enabled PBX systems; connecting the company Web site to the PBX system via click-to-call
Place calls with Skype to landlines and mobile phones worldwide from any connected SIP-enabled PBX; reducing costs with Skype’s low-cost global rates
Purchase Skype’s online numbers, to receive calls to the corporate PBX from landlines or mobile phones
Manage Skype calls using their existing hardware and system applications such as call routing, conferencing, phone menus and voicemail; no additional downloads or training are required
How to participate
The Skype For SIP beta program for business users opens today. SIP users, phone system administrators, developers and service partners are invited to apply at www.skypeforsip.com. Applicants will need to be businesses, have an installed SIP based IP-PBX system, as well as a level of technical competency to configure their own SIP-enabled PBX. The initial beta is available to a limited number of participants.
During the beta period all calls will be charged at standard Skype rates. Further pricing details will be announced when the product is fully launched later this year.
After having more time to work in detail with the Skype for Asterisk (SFA) channel in closed beta, I have developed an Adhearsioncomponent to ease my development and testing efforts. Hopefully this will ease yours in the near future when the public beta becomes available.
The Skype Utils component provides a few features to take advantage of what this new channel brings to the Asterisk platform. First, the component provides a single method call to access a wealth of information in your dialplan that is delivered with each Skype call. This type of information is unheard of on any other channel available to Asterisk (let alone telecoms in general), this information includes:
skype_languages – A space-separated list of language identifiers (ie – es, en, etc)
skype_topic – A user-provided string that can identify the ‘topic’ of the call
skype_token – Similar to skype_topic
skype_about – ‘about’ profile entry
skype_birthday – Birthday
skype_gender – Gender
skype_homepage – Home page URL
skype_homephone – Home phone number
skype_officephone – Office phone number
skype_mobilephone – Mobile phone number
skype_city – City name
skype_province – State/Province name
skype_country – Country name
The next feature that the component provides is the ability to map Skype usernames with Asterisk extensions. Typically Asterisk is used with phones that require you to enter a numeric phone number when dialing someone. Of course most Skype names are usernames that have nothing to do with a phone number. With this component you may enter the relationship between an extension number and a Skype username in database with a Ruby on Rails web interface. Then when calls are made to and from the Skype network you have a seamless translation between the two.
Last (so far), but not least, is the ability to track Skype presence information. The SFA channel allows you to add ‘buddies’ to your Asterisk/Skype username. Once this has been done, you are then able to obtain status updates from each of the buddies on your list.
The component then allows you to track these status updates and access them in your dialplan. The status updates may be persisted to a database or kept in memory. Further, those status updates are not only available to your dialplan but to the REST, DRb and STOMP APIs of Adhearsion, making them available to virtually any program.
With this you may track if each Skype user is in one of the following states:
Online – user is online
Skype Me – user is available and asking to be ‘Skyped’
Away – the user is away from their Skype client
Not Available – the user is not available for a call
Do Not Disturb – the user does not want to be disturbed
Offline (Voicemail Enabled) – the user is offline and has voicemail
Offline (Voicemail Disabled) – the user is offline and has no voicemail
Stay tuned for example applications that will build upon this component. In the meantime do not hesitate to have a look at the code and details here.
I would also like to thank @steely_glint and Todd Gould, fellow beta team members, for their assistance in constructing an environment where all the pieces could work. Great progress is being made on the SFA beta code, but of course there are still some quirks.
Skype brings back Skypecasts with a new feature: with one click, introduce spammers, con artists, and sexy webcam girls to each other.
Skype for Neocortex. Mood based on serotonin levels. Very high quality audio and video by tapping directly into the optic nerve and auditory system. Some side effects.
Skype for Lovers. Extension of Skype 4.1. Just one buddy to dial. No interruptions. Ultrasimple UI: click the heart.
Skype’s new platforms have more active developers than BT Ribbit. More than Google Android. Fewer than Apple iPhone.
Litigation. 1530 sleep deprived patients sue Skype for keeping them up late.
Google Central will be exciting.
Google Video Talk adds multiparty video.
The Emerging Communications Conference (eComm) will sell out.
Yahoo! fires thousands of people. Decimates the messenger team. Hires a new executive team. Reorganizes. Again.
Skype introduces multiparty video. The kids love it. WebEx hates it.
Skype for Asterisk gets video call support. Dating sites love it.
Skype for WoW builds on Skype for Asterisk. The raiders love it.
Skypephone comes to the Americas via partnership with with US mobile carriers. Wal-Mart will carry it. Nothing for Canada.
3 INQ1 sales will cut into 3 Skypephone sales in the UK.
U.S. Mobile Carterfone rules (to free mobile phones from carrier contracts) will be considered by the FCC.
VoIP falls from telecom jargon. Even VoIP bloggers stop using the term. The public starts using Skype as a generic name for internet talk.
eBay’s auction businesses will do well in tough times, better in the second half of the year.
Skype will make $630 million in FY2009.
Peak Skype usage will top 18 million simultaneous users.
Ben Lilienthal: Yes, we are in the process of shutting down highspeedconferencing.com. In reality, we stopped operating this service almost a year ago when we launched the 2nd iteration of it — www.HiDefConferencing.com.
SJ. HiGhspeEdconferencing was novel for its Skype integration when you launched it. How has the world of conferencing changed since then?
HighSpeed was the first integrated Skype and Phone conferencing service.
HiDefConferencing.com replaced it and is the first and only wideband, fixed price, better than PSTN sound quality conference calling service in the world!!!
Q. What was HighSpeedConferencing’s business model? How is it different than HiDefConferencing?
With the shutdown of Skypecasts last month, we more than doubled the minutes on the service and the number of registered users. Highspeedconferencing relied on payments from rural LECs to generate revenue.
HiDefconferencing.com is targeted squarely at the SMB market which currently spends over $1billion/year on audio conferencing services. That segment of the market is projected to grow to over $2bn in the next five years.
HiDefConferencing.com is the only service in the world that offers fixed price, unlimited minutes plans for Small and Medium sized businesses
Q. Will Skype for Asterisk lower barriers to entry for voice conferencing?
We don’t compete with free. If people are going to use free services there are plenty available within Skype itself for conferencing.
Q. How is the shocking news about our changing world economy affecting your plans?
Collaboration, especially the type of collaboration that we have been working on for the last 5 years, which is a product of fearless innovation and delivers high quality for lower costs just happens to be a counter-cyclical business.
In other words, as the economy does worse, www.hidefconferencing.com does better.
People still need to collaborate but they are looking for low-cost, innovative solutions such as www.hidefconferencing.com to replace getting on airplanes, and staying in hotels.
Q. I use HiDefConferencing for weekly meetings of DataPortability.org.What are three features we’re probably not using that we should try?
Three features you should use and probably don’t are recording, hand raising and web controls.
Also, we will be launching a new UI later this month to streamline the scheduling and invitation process.
Skype asked the FCC to support unfettered customer freedom following statements at CTIA’s conference last month. CTIA and Sprint retorted with balderdash and Skype’s Christopher Libertelli sets them straight in this short, direct letter. Emphasis mine.
October 8, 2008
Electronic Filing
Chairman Kevin J. Martin Federal Communications Commission 445 12th Street, SW 12th Street Lobby, TW-A325 Washington, D.C. 20554
Re: Ex Parte Presentation; RM-11361
Dear Chairman Martin:
Skype Communications S.A.R.L. (“Skype”) responds briefly to CTIA’s letter of September 24th and Sprint Nextel’s letter of September 26th, both of which take issue with Skype’s earlier letter to you regarding the lack of openness of wireless networks. CTIA and Sprint go to great lengths to rebut Skype’s characterization of remarks made at a CTIA conference earlier this month, which Skype viewed as indicative of a hesitant, closed network mentality among wireless operators.
Rather than prolong an empty debate about whose characterization of remarks at the conference is correct, let me point out that Skype’s application is forbidden, blocked and otherwise interfered with by the largest CTIA members.[1] When CTIA members claim that “the entire Internet is open,” the intended implication is that the entire Internet is open, including to multi-modal Internet communications applications like Skype. The truth of the matter, however, is that, despite their representations to the contrary, applications are blocked even on the most recently-announced advanced handsets.[2] The proof of Skype’s argument is in the conduct of CTIA members, no matter what speeches are made at conferences. If Skype is blocked, the network is not open.
I also would like to take this opportunity to remind you that CTIA is currently suing the Commission to overturn the very openness rule they now claim to embrace. If the wireless industry is serious about openness, CTIA would immediately withdraw that litigation.
CTIA attempts to sidestep the fact that its members’ networks are not open by arguing that Skype itself is closed and, apparently, therefore cannot advocate consumer empowerment principles and network openness. To make this point, they cite a blog post by Mr. Michael Robertson, CEO of Gizmo Project, a VOIP application. Fundamentally, Mr. Robertson is wrong. Mr. Robertson confuses open networks with open platforms. Skype is an open platform. Anyone, anywhere on the planet can download Skype for free, and he or she will be able to use Skype. Skype’s software is open to any application developer through our public Application Programming Interface (‘API’) program. Over 10,000 developers have taken advantage of this API and are part of Skype’s developer program. In fact there are many applications that use Skype’s APIs to send calls to/from Skype users and SIP endpoints, including VoSky, Fring, etc. Skype also recently collaborated with Digium/Asterisk, which will now bring Skype into “soft PBXs” for millions of users and allow many forms of applications and services to connect to Skype seamlessly.
Mr. Robertson is also wrong on the law. He rehashes the incumbent wireless operators’ various arguments against network neutrality and confuses to whom the Internet Policy Statement applies. Openness rules are properly targeted at network operators because of the limited intermodal choices available to US consumers in a wireless market dominated by the top three operators. Conversely, there is nearly limitless choice in Internet applications, with fierce competition and few or no barriers to entry. Quite properly, therefore, the Internet Policy Statement applies to networks and not to applications. Its aim is to assure an open Internet so that consumers can choose from the limitless number of applications available to Internet users, absent discrimination by network operators. To apply it to Internet applications would flipt the Internet Policy statement on its head. What the network operators are doing is very different. They restrict consumer choice by blocking Skype and other applications to which consumers would like to have access. To apply the Internet Policy Statement to Internet applications would flip the Policy Statement on its head.
We greatly appreciate CTIA’s invitation to attend the April show in Las Vegas. If CTIA members would like to prove their openness once and for all, Skype’s top executives will be available to attend the conference. When a Skype user can legally call the Chairman of the FCC on the mobile broadband networks of each of the top three wireless networks, we will know that their conduct is consistent with the consumer empowerment principles of the Internet Policy Statement.
We look forward to working with the Commission and CTIA members to ensure that the whole Internet – including multimodal applications such as Skype – is available to consumers.
Respectfully submitted,
Christopher Libertelli Senior Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs SKYPE COMMUNICATIONS S.A.R.L. 6e etage, 22/24 boulevard Royal, Luxembourg, L-2449 LUXEMBOURG
1. Most network operators continue to restrict VoIP and or P2P applications on their network in apparent violation of the protocol-agnostic network management techniques employed by other operators, including Comcast.
I just caught two Asterisk notes. First, Digium CEO Danny Windham boiled down the big Microsoft-Skype story into one headline: Microsoft plus Skype, equals Microsoft. My favorite lines: 
I think it’s simple housecleaning on Skype’s part. Skype for Asterisk has little usage, is redundant with existing and future Skype products, and offers no revenue to speak of. Former Skype Journal anchor Jim Courtney IM’d this was probably in the works before the Microsoft deal. 
I never realized this but 
Skype network to receive calls from the Skype network and place calls to 
Last (so far), but not least, is the ability to track Skype 
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