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November 12, 2004
Skype's Game
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
One point often missed in the rush to Voice Over IP is how it leaves us all at the mercy of software companies playing games with standards.
For instance. Most Voice Over IP products are fairly standard. The telephone industry's VoIP efforts will all be fairly interoperable.
The exception is Skype. And guess who dominates the market.
Right now this is no big deal. It's trivial to load two VoIP programs on a PC, and to use the one the person you're calling prefers.
But this is about to change.
Here's how. Siemens is embedding Skype into its cordless phones. This lets you use VoIP from a cordless, which sounds good.
The trouble is it's just Skype VoIP. And I don't think my cordless can handle two different VoIP programs.
This is why I've been banging the drum so hard for wireless networking as a true platform. If your LAN runs Linux or Windows, and if your access point has some expansion slots, you could easily support both VoIP "standards" on your cordless. Not to mention all the medical, inventory, and home automation stuff you could run on the same network.
Until we treat wireless networking as a true platform, this kind of problem is just going to escalate. Imagine, phones that can't talk to one another.
They're coming.
Comments (4)
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
1. Jesse Kopelman on November 12, 2004 04:30 PM writes...
I'm not so sure this a real problem. All you need is a gateway and all of a sudden the incompatible phones are talking. That's the great thing about technology -- every problem begets a solution and the machine (and the money) keeps on rolling.
Permalink to Comment2. Tariq Mustafa on November 13, 2004 03:14 AM writes...
Jesse:
You are missing the point - any technology needs to be simple enough to attract mass adoption. Gateways are good for the labs and the geeks but the average Joe doesn't have the brain and the pockets to afford N number of Gateways for N number of protocols that make up our digital life these days.
My mantra for the next centry: Small is Beautiful. Simple is sexy.
Permalink to Comment3. Dana Blankenhorn on November 13, 2004 05:46 PM writes...
Tariq: A mantra?
I happen to agree with you.
Simple is sexy.
In the same way that a "dumb network"
is better than a "smart" network.
It's simply more efficient that way.
Thanks for writing
Permalink to Comment4. Jesse Kopelman on November 15, 2004 05:12 PM writes...
I think you guys are missing my point. It is not the end user who has the gateway but some third party. The joy of IP is that it doesn't really matter where things are. You do not need a Skype/X gateway in your house, it could be anywhere on the network. All you need is a client that knows how to point to it. My own argument for simplicity is stop trying to make the end-suer worry about standards -- let the software handle it. Simple and limited are not the same thing.
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