Skype ON!

rants, technology September 6th, 2006

I started playing with SKYPE last night, and I’m impressed.

I loaded Skype version 2.5 last week and ordered a cheap USB phone – it looks like an old Nokia “candy bar” wireless phone with a USB cable. I’m good at splurging when it’s $15 with a $10 rebate, but I might go all out and get a bluetooth USB/headset kit – I can use the headset with my Blackberry 9100T.

Dialing through it feels like any other phone. In test calls, I heard a glitch or two, certainly nothing worse than with traditional GSM/TDMA cell phone reception.

I’ve run VOIP on Nortel Networks PBXes for several years, as both an IP trunking solution and with IP phones, but this is the first time I’ve tried consumer-level VOIP. No wonder the LECs are scared! Dial tone has been their monopoly/cash cow for almost a century, and having a locked-in customer base makes planning easy.

If the LECs allowed naked DSL like they were supposed to in order to get into the long distance markets after the telco deregulation of the 90′s, they would have had their subscriber base whittled to nothing.

I would love to see the LECs forced to provide E911 service on all lines like cell phones are required to do. Get naked DSL, a dead phone line for E911, VOIP for personal calls, and internet for everything else… :)

E911 – don’t get me started. LECs hold E911 service like it’s “their” investment that they shouldn’t have to share with competitors, hoping people don’t remember that WE PAID FOR IT WITH FEDERAL TAXES.

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