All About Skype Except in China

All About Skype Except in China

Skype is a program founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who also created Kazaa. It's a peer to peer network that is used for making free calls over the internet to another person who also uses Skype. Not only is it easy to download and use, but it's free and compatible with most computers. Skype calling to other Skype users is free, but calling to regular phone numbers there's a SkypeOut fee. There's also a fee, called SkypeIn, when receiving calls from a regular phone number. Also, receiving voice mail in Skype has a fee. Best thing to do is to use Skype to Skype. Then use the regular phone numbers with your regular phone. Confused yet? Hope not.

Well in the pretty world of Skype, there's a lot of dollar bills involved. Skype was recently purchased by Ebay for $ 2.6 billion dollars, and if additional goals are met by 2008, the founders of Skype will receive an additional $1.5 billion dollars. However, this is going to be a challenge for many countries that want to stay with the long distance revenues. China Telecom has been trying to block Skype, so that the people can continue to pay their high fees in long distance. This blocking has already began in the city of Shenzhen in early September, and there has been blocking plans for Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

For China Telecom, long distance is a big part of their revenue. Skype is taking away consumers from China Telecom and many other long distance companies. In addition, these companies are being pressure to lowering their long distance fees, which will ultimately decrease their annual revenues. Skype seems to still be winning either way. Consumers are happy and the key to consumers is to save money, so China Telecom needs to come up with a better strategy. Blocking is one way, but how long will that go on, I'm sure there will be another program that will possibly block these blockings..hmm. Makes sense?

Remember Napster, it changed and put a lot of pressure in the music industry. Skype has made the long distance companies nervous. A new and inexpensive way to call other countries-genious. In the internet world, anything can happen.

Posted: 10:04 a.m. EST October 13, 2005 by Mari Fernandez