Broadcasting

January 22, 2007
Skype for effective communications

CHENNAI -- Skype is a computer program that can be used to make free voice calls over the Internet to anyone else who is also using Skype. It is free and easy to download and use, and also works with most computers. Once it is downloaded, registered and the software is installed, a headset, speakers or USB phone is plugged in to start using it. It offers high-quality voice communications to anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world.

Skype’s free software features include conference calling, global directory, file transfer, SkypeOut (calls to any landline or mobile destination in the world at highly competitive rates), instant messaging and many more. Skype’s premium services provide low-cost connectivity to traditional fixed and mobile telephones. Skype’s software offers robust features, including voicemail, instant messaging, call forwarding and conference calling.

The pioneering company

Luxembourg-based Skype Technologies, one of the fastest growing Internet companies, which developed Skype software, was founded in 2002 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. Skype adds about 150,000 users a day, backed by an ecosystem of products, services, developers, and affiliates. eBay acquired Skyke on September 2005. The deal enabled Skype to advance its leadership in Internet voice communications and offer new ways to communicate in a global online era. Founded in 1995, eBay pioneers communities built on commerce, sustained by trust, and inspired by opportunity. eBay enables ecommerce on a local, national and international basis with an array of websites.

Global usage scenarios

Worldwide Skype is popular with business and personal users as a little piece of software that allows them to make calls from their PC, without worrying about the cost or the distance.

Premier Pac, US, exports fruit produce from Mexico, Chile and Argentina for distribution to the US and Canada. In the past all its business was done by email. Now the company uses Skype to keep in touch with its growers. This increases the lucidity and trust between them and it is clearer than any landline. Executives travel to South America three times a year to check the crops to establish what it needs and wants to export that year. It enables them to work anywhere with their laptops as they meet with their exporters and go over their selling prices, the quality specifications, and walk the fields and look at the produce. Premier executives go to Santiago in Chile, where they have got a wireless golf club hot spot for conducting business.

Skype in India

SMC Networks, dealing in LAN hardware, broadband connectivity devices and SOHO/home wireless products, has released wireless Internet mobile phone for Skype software in India. The WiFi phone includes Skype software that allows free calls to Skype users anywhere in the world and enables calling to ordinary landlines and mobile phones using SkypeOut at a very low cost.

Tanla Mobile, provider of sms, mms, WAP and 3G services in UK and India, will supply a mobile messaging delivery platform enabling users to use their Skype credit to send text messages from their PC to mobile phones around the world. The platform will connect to Skype SMS, for contacting friends on their mobiles. Tanla will help provide the bridge between Skype users at their PCs and mobile phone users.

Indian user’s perspective of Skype

Aparnaa Venkatesan, Chief Operating Officer, Bangalore operations, Agriya Infoway, a Web Publishing company, narrates an interesting and lucid business case study of using Skype software. Agriya uses Skype for its business applications, for development of small to medium size Web solutions for corporate business and entrepreneurs from around the world, serving clients in every continent and in over fifty different countries. Skype is helpful for communications of Agriya Infoway in two ways. It enables the company to have communications facility with global clients, as well as between Agriya’s Chennai and Bangalore offices.

Agriya Infoway is using Skype for the purpose of communication with clients and its staff. These calls are very clear. They are free of ads and get through firewalls without any problem. In Agriya’s case, use of Skype technology has resulted in tremendous reduction of telephone bills. Even if they are offline, there is an option of saving voice messages, so that the development staff do not miss out any enquiry or important communication from clients. Since the company was using telephones before, the efficiency, ease of work process and other stuff remain the same, but at reduced phone bills thanks to Skype.

The company is using head phones and ‘Simply Phones’. Simply Phone is a Skype certified USB handset that allows the user to make Skype VoIP (Voice-over-internet) calls, avoiding the need for a headset. This implies that it has been fully tested and approved by Skype Communications. It incorporates standard phone keypad, LCD display, selectable ring tone for incoming calls, PC to PC and PC to phone communications feature, USB compatibility, echo cancellation, noise reduction, and caller ID functionality. To operate the SimplyPhone, users have to download and install the Skype software and the simply phone driver at www.skype.com.

• Dwelling on innovations, Aparnaa informs Skype has released the latest version of its software, Skype 3.0 Beta for Windows on 8 Nov. It has some enhancements to the ‘look and feel’ aspect. The new features as per their release version are; Skypecasts and Public Chats which allow users to join in multi-person community conversations and discussions; Click-to-call which lets users make calls to ordinary phone numbers with just one click when surfing different websites, using SkypeOut and a more powerful and personal user interface making it even easier to enjoy using Skype.

Aparnaa thanks the Indian government for making rapid changes in telecom technologies and bringing down the price of broadband connections. Net connection is affordable to everyone, resulting in massive growth in broadband usage in India over last few years. This in turn has led to greater usage of Web based telephone systems instead of ISD calls. She finds Skype to be better, cheaper and a faster alternative. Use of Skype is recommended by her foreign clients and friends/relatives living abroad. Skype usage will spread in future due to the technical advancement and also due to advent of strict cyber laws in India as that will motivate Indian businesses to incorporate Skype software for ecommerce transactions.

Bulgarian Skype solution

Lyubomir Gerasimov, product and sales manager, Euro Design, Bulgaria, elucidates an interesting Skype application solution provided by Euro Design, in form of ‘Mobigater’, a Skype to GSM and GSM to Skype gateway. This device connects the user’s mobile phone to PC or laptop that runs the Skype software.

Euro design specialises in the deployment of new digital products and solutions. It develops and implements the newest technologies in the consumer electronics, retail, and VoIP solution fields. The company will provide two Skype packages, namely MobiGater Plus and MobiGater Pro. The difference will be in the number of mobile phones that can connect with a single MobiGater. The MobiGater Pro package will be very useful for companies with international offices as it will significantly decrease the amount spent on telephony and roaming.

Gerasimov is all praise for Skype, the world’s fastest-growing Internet communication tool, which allows unlimited free voice communication between users, and is available in 28 languages, and has over 135 million unique users worldwide. Over 400 million Skype software has been downloaded, over 26 billion minutes of voice communications served, and an average of 7 million users constantly sign in. Its popularity is increasing as a business tool as a big chunk of employees of international firms create Skype accounts and use them instead of landlines.

Skype and its features

• ‘vSkype’, the first multi-user video conferencing extension to Skype for Microsoft Window, has been shipped by Skype. 40 million Skype users will have access to multi-user video and desktop sharing features. Inaugural screen shots depict an international video conference session hosted between user sites from, Poland, Toronto, Canada, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA, Sweden, and Bucharest, Romania.

Skype for e-commerce transactions

Good communication is at the heart of smooth e-commerce transactions. eBay.co.uk, the online marketplace, is introducing Skype functionality to its listings, helping buyers and sellers to communicate with each other. This service will let sellers add Skype functions including free Internet voice calls and instant messaging to their listings across a range of categories. Sellers will be able to include a Skype Me button on the eBay.co.uk listings page that buyers see. By clicking the button, buyers will be able to talk to sellers or use Skype instant messenger at no cost to ask about items and discuss deliveries or postage. The pilot program will be tried out in categories including art, antiques, stamps, coins, pottery, glass, sports memorabilia, real estate, baby products, musical instruments, and audio consumer electronics.

Skype certified hardware

• Actiontec’s Vosky Exchange allows company PBX systems to connect with up to four Skype callers. Linksys’ cordless Internet phone provides freedom of movement; a convenient alternative to Skype calls on the PC. Polycom’s PCCalling Kit, an option for Polycom’s SoundStation2 and SoundStation2W (wireless) conference phones, enables the conference phones to also serve as the microphone and speaker for Internet calling. US Robotics’ USB Internet speakerphone enables hands-free, high-quality Skype calls

The future

Aparnaa opines the free services offered by Skype facilitate increasing number of users in its fold, The company only charges for the premium features. She feels that in the future as more and more people use Skype features and they cannot do without it, Skype may gradually start charging for its services. Yet the unheralded launch of Skype services is rapidly changing the global communication scenario.