TMCnet News
Skype Goes 2.0By RICH TEHRANI
President & Group Editor-in-Chief The challenge for service providers everywhere is how to deal with Skype. The ubiquitous software is a revenue killer for the competition and while many service providers fight to add new features quickly in order to have a better product than Skype, the Luxembourg based company keeps belting out better and better versions. The latest, 2.0 is in beta but comes with a laundry list of features that will continue to have the company leading the marketshare war for p2p VoIP software. For example, video is now included in the software. Visual communications was once the domain of Packet8 and Vonage and a handful of others. In addition, the user interface has been streamlined with one-click access to key features. The company has taken the emoticon concept and applied it to communication allowing you to broadcast your mood as well as your presence. You can also use custom avatars and ringtones in your communication. In a move that makes more and more sense for the self-anointed global phone company is the ability to see the time zones of others so you don’t wake them. The program also supports better grouping of contacts, allowing single-click conference calls. Perhaps the most useful of all the new features is true integration with Microsoft Outlook allowing one-click dialing from the address book. As Skype continues adding new features, other software providers and service providers better watch out. With Skype in such a dominant position others have to do it better and faster to get ahead. As long as Skype keeps innovating and doesn’t make any major mistakes it will be a tough company to overtake. ----- Rich Tehrani is President and Group Editor in Chief at TMC. In addition he is the Chairman of the world’s best attended VoIP event, Internet Telephony Conference & Expo. |