Skype: 100 Billion Free Phone Minutes And Counting
Erick Schonfeld
29 comments »
Since launching four and half years ago, Skype users have talked to each other for 100 billion minutes, and that is just counting free Skype-to-Skype phone calls. Of course, many of those calls would never have been made if Skype didn’t exists, so you cannot count the entire 100 billion minutes as a loss for the phone companies. But a significant chunk of that has got to be eating away at phone company profits.
Skype’s owner, eBay, is not necessarily the winner here either. While Skype has been a boon for consumers, it’s eBay that is footing the bill. Even at the reduced $3.1 billion acquisition price after the write-down, eBay still ended up paying roughly 3 cents a minute for all of those calls. I think I pay less with Verizon.
As someone who briefly worked in telecom and used to work with a client who had a callreturn business, Skype killed that business model. Period. Dead. Done. Stick a big fork in it. We charted the decline and it was clearly related directly to the success of Skype.
FYI, I think your title should be 100 billion free phone minutes (not calls)…
LLLLLLLOVE Skype - I speak to my parents who are overseas for hours now for free.
Berofe though the conversations were only 10-15 minutes long.
Skype’s VOIP is excellent but their chat protocol is another story.
@#1 considering skype tends to drop my calls like cellular service on a submarine i think the title should be 200 billion free phone calls…
j/k
“Even at the reduced $3.1 billion acquisition price after the write-down, eBay still ended up paying roughly 3 cents a minute for all of those calls. I think I pay less with Verizon.”
Acquisition price / all-time skype-to-skype minutes is no kind of metric at all - but I give points for humorously creative accounting!
You almost make it sound like Skype loses money - which is of course not at all true.
How does Skype stand up as a business solution? I am looking into options moving from a basic Comdial PBX system and would love to have a main line for incoming calls and then an attendant transfer calls to agents over Skype. I’m sure it would be much cheaper, but is the technology mature enough to handle it on a large scale with favorable results?
Isnt the title wrong here? Shouldnt it be “100 billion Skype minutes” or something to that effect as 100 billion minutes doesnt equal 100 billion calls…
you just have to check out internetcalls.com first and then talk about skype…
If google can count:
http://www.google.com.mx/search?q=1+billion+*+3+cents+in+dollars&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:es-AR:official&client=firefox-a
ouch… those are 30 million dollars on free calls.
man I love skype. I wish someone would integrate skype with….oh well, I’ll keep that idea to myself.
for my machine it made always problems, so I decided to remove hype-skype
Have notebook, will travel! We started using Skype for home based employees and its quickly become the chosen medium for communications within our company. Not because of the cost.
I think Skype is leaving the door wide open for someone to rush in and take the business market away from them.
Skype isn’t bad, but it’s far from perfect. Its protocol is closed and cryptic. I prefer standards like SIP. Skype’s business relies heavily on vendor lock-in, which as we all know isn’t good at all for the consumer.
Recently I tried gizmo and it seems pretty nice, too.
12 Million Online - New Peak on 18 February 2008
Only 100 billion total? That doesn’t seem like much. YouTube does almost 1 billion videos per DAY. per DAY.
skype reached around 19h GMT 12 million concurrent users online on Monday, this for the first time ever. It went from 11 to 12 million in 42 days.This is an absolute speed record. The previous record million “speed” was 63 days in March 2006.
That doesn’t sound like much considering how many users it has.
Those who are considering Skype as a business solution should look into the fiasco when Skype suddenly cancelled 10,000 SkypeIn numbers in the London area, just before Christmas, with less than 30 days notice. Think what it would be like to try to run a business without knowing if your phone number would be valid tomorrow.
They should think about what it was like when Skype had a WORLD-WIDE total service outage for three days last August, and has had several more local outages since then.
They should think about the fact that when PAYING Skype customers need support, there is no phone number to call (a phone service without a phone number? That should say a lot right there!). There is no email address to write to. The only means of contacting support is via the Skype web page, and it promises a response only after FOUR DAYS - and of course doesn’t mention that the response, when it finally arrives, is generally useless gibberish.
They should think about the hundreds, or thousands, of Skype customers who have had their accounts blocked, and can’t even find out the reason until the above-mentioned FOUR DAY response delay passes. Would you like to run a business and not be able to use the phone for four days, with no explanation?
Skype has no future unless it sorts out its appalling call quality - I tried to use it for my business, but it drops calls left right and centre - It’s not even that cheap! We’re almost better off with BT or one of the big providers.
I have had Skype for a couple of years now and have NEVER used the service…I wonder how many computer users do the exact same thing?
I don’t even know why I have not used Skype yet..the point I am making is that Ebay does a very bad job persuading me and others like me that Skype is something that I MUST use…dre of http://www.Caramelhoneys.com
http://www. i - guide .ro
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THE DARN SKYPE BUTTON IS ONLY GOOD IN WEBSITES AND NEVER IN MY GMAIL AS A SIGNATURE.NO html
I HAVE TO PUBLISH A GOOGLE PAGE WITH MY SKYPEBUTTON AND THEN INCLUDE THAT PAGE IN MY GMAIL SIGNATURE
booooring!!!!!!!
http://nativeingles.googlepage.....reenbutton
http://oregondepartmentoffishandwildlife.net/ They should think about what it was like when Skype had a WORLD-WIDE total service outage for three days last August, and has had several more local outages since then.
It is sistem like Skype - http://www.megafon.lv