Skype's pipe dream?

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Wow

I was travelling in China and Japan earlier this month. One of my contacts in China had introduced me to Skype a month earlier and as soon as SkypeOut became available I bought credits for my trip.

All I can say is that it was fantastic. In every hotel I bypassed the gazillion-dollars-per-minute call home to Canada by plugging my laptop into the hotel network, putting on my headphones, and calling family and clients halfway around the world. In many cases, the people I was talking to didn't even know that I was calling over the Internet.

The only time the call quality suffered (in some cases to the point where I couldn't make the call at all) was when the Internet itself was at fault. The Internet infrastructure in China is still being developed and in one city once the workday starts all hope of getting enough bandwidth for a phone conversation is gone. Despite this, even a mediocre connection (as defined by Bandwidth Place) was often enough for me to carry on an intelligible conversation with someone halfway around the world.

I saved literally hundreds of dollars in hotel phone bills; my only regret is that, still thinking like a telco user, I bought too much SkypeOut credit (25 Euros, of which 21.05 remains). I can never hope to use the remaining credit before it expires in five months.

Posted by: Kevin Dean   Posted on: 09/28/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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