Skype,
the voice over internet protocol (VoIP) software company, is now
the world's biggest carrier of international telephone calls, and
is poised to grow even bigger by grabbing the lucrative business
market.
According to market analyst
Telegeography, Skype's
international voice traffic grew 41% to 33 billion minutes, 8% of
the world's total last year. That was achieved in five years
despite origins in the Kazaa peer-to-peer file-sharing
controversy.
Skype is a software application that allows users to make voice
and video calls and conference calls, as well as send short "chat"
messages, files and images from their PCs, and increasingly, from
their mobile phones. Calls between Skype users are free, but calls
into and from the traditional telephone network cost about €0.17.
Users can also pre-pay for calls and voicemail services.
Ian Robin, sales and marketing manager of Skype's business
division, says a user survey last year showed that 35% of its 405
million subscribers use Skype for business. He says business users
come from all sectors of the economy, from eBay merchants to
merchant bankers, as well as divisions of larger firms.
"We have got a very compelling offer, especially on
international calls," he says. But it is also easier to text with a
PC keyboard than a mobile phone keypad. Business travellers use
Skype to stay in touch with family while overseas, and this often
expands to calls and "chats" to the office, he says.
Jane Folwell, CEO of Folwell PR, a small IT public relations
firm, says she uses it to keep in touch with her colleagues and
with journalists, especially when she is away from her office. She
values Skype for its speed and simplicity and is not bothered by
security concerns. "I do not put anything confidential on Skype,"
she says.
Despite its success, Skype remains controversial. This is partly
because all Skype calls and much of Skype's code is encrypted.
This makes it hard to understand exactly how it works "on the
inside", says security expert Peter Wenham, CEO of
Trusted
Management, and security spokesman for the
Communications Managers'
Association, a business users organisation.
Trusted Management discovered that the Skype client on a PC
automatically upgrades it to a "supernode" when it detects the user
has a high-speed connection. This makes it a main conduit for all
Skype traffic, giving other users a "free ride".
There are about 40 supernodes worldwide at any one time, Wenham
says. Most are home users with little, if any, security.
But Wenham is more worried that a criminal manages to hack
Skype, infect a supernode and use it to distribute malware.
Robin acknowledges these reservations and others, and says Skype
is addressing them. He says users have always been able to turn off
the supernode mode, and Skype has released a management tool that
makes it easier to allocate credits and monitor usage.
Wenham says Skype works very well, but recommends firms do a
risk assessment before they commit to it. Trusted Management, which
work a lot with government, has not. "I judged it was not an
acceptable risk to my business," Wenham says.
Skype for business
Last month Skype confirmed its intentions to tackle the business
community by launching a beta version of Skype for Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP), which allows free or cheap Skype calls
to and from internet-enabled private branch exchanges (ipbxs).
The move means Skype's 405 million registered users can
click-to-call businesses for free while visiting the business's
website.
This follows a stream of launches in recent months to add Skype
capability to the iPhone, Android Nokia and Java-capable mobile
phones. When Skype launched its iPhone client two weeks ago, more
than a million people downloaded it in a week.
Commenting on the move, IDC research analyst Rebecca Swensen
says, "Businesses have been waiting for Skype to push into the
business space for a while. Connecting to existing standards-based
SIP PBXes is a good way for Skype to start. It will be interesting
to see how large companies change their thinking about the
deployment of Skype within the network."