> > We learned in the legacy telephone world how bad monopolies are when it > comes to price, features, innovation, etc. Why would consumers then > move to a similar model when they migrate to VoIP? Answer: slick > marketing on Skype's part, as well as herd mindset. > > There are many reasons to stay clear of Skype.
Skype is brilliant in some areas. They have done in a matter of a few months what the whole voip industry couldn't do in several years. That is, to make a product that is easy to use, free, and works without problems most of the time. I completely understand your points, I agree in fact. But ignoring why millions of people use skype and brushing it aside as herd mentality is a mistake and missing the other side of the picture. You know to this day I have yet to find a sip or iax softphone that doesn't crash, lockup, or come with incorrect or no documentation? And I won't even get into how difficult it is for the average user to configure softphones. My wife uses skype a lot to call her family in Russia. She would love to be able to use a real phone via a sipura 2000 I have here, but the fact is, I can't find a softphone for her family to use that isn't so difficult to configure and error prone that I would recommend using it over skype. The fact is, there is not ONE sip or iax softphone that is as easy to use as skype for the average user. The sad thing is it doesn't have to be that way. Also, just say for a second that there was an easy to configure/use softphone. Now the average user has to find out way more than they ever wanted to about voip before they become aware of services like FWD. Then once they overcome that obstacle,. Guess what? The FWD documentation is so outdated for how to configure other softphones that it's virtualy worthless for the average user. I'll bet you anything what will happen is that skype will eventually interoperate with SIP. After they have a ton of market share and interoperation becomes more of an issue. In the meantime they are giving the average person what they really want, while everyone else is busy pointing fingers. I guess I'm a bit frustrated because it is very difficult to find reasons why people who use skype should switch to something else. For the average person, there really aren't any compelling reasons I can find when you take everything into account. Chris _______________________________________________ Asterisk-Users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit: http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
