Skype pulls up socks for corporate service Skype has moved its connect service out of beta and is pitching it at businesses as speculation grows about the VoIP pioneer's future. Skype Connect is a box that Skype-enables business communications, plugging into a PBX to provide Skype prices and quality from the comfort of an office desk. The service has been in beta for …
You might find the following information surprising.
Skype is *MORE EXPENSIVE* than my local wired telco for calls from Canada to the Philippines. My local wired telco charges Cdn$0.22 per minute, with zero extra fees (but plus local sales tax). Skype charges Cdn$0.297, plus per-call set-up fee. No matter how you slice and dice it, 29.7 is MORE THAN 22.0.
In this case, Skype occupies the space where an inexpensive Internet telco should be.
Skype is great for calls from WiFi-equipped hotels in the USA back to Canada. Only a couple cents per minute. Use my iPhone. Great. Nice. Almost free.
But I consider the tariffs to the Philippines to be a major FAIL by Skype. It would be cheaper if they simply routed the call right back into the local Public Switched Telephone Network and marked it up by 10%. I don't know how they route the overseas calls, but they've chosen a route that is MORE EXPENSIVE than the baseline. Very disappointing. Useless. Major Fail.
has always been a world beater. I've been waiting for this to happen for five years now. The big question is: Will Cisco use Skype to take on incumbent telcos, or will they throttle it back to help control the P2P load on *their* "pipes"? Cisco controls way too much of the infrastructure.
"a monthly fee of €5 for every simultaneous connection"
Eh ? Not sure that parses... AFAICS the fee is for each channel, capable of concurrent calls, you want for your SIP profile. Maybe it's me, but the comment above seems to imply it's something to do with two or more connections in the process of being made (i.e. actually happening, not potentially) and so could be avoided by, for example, taking it in turn to make calls ;)
More details here anyway :
http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/business/sip/pricing
"To use Skype Connect you'll need to purchase a monthly channel subscription based on the number of concurrent calls you will be making or receiving with your SIP profile. Each channel purchased allows for either one inbound or one outbound call at any time. You can buy up to 300 channels per SIP
Profile."
Skype Connect finally provides Enterprise with a seamless and effective solution - addressing key concerns for most companies cost, security, and ease of integration. (The pricing may require an in-depth cost benefit analysis!) Most interesting may be the full integration with the PBX since I assume it will also provide Skype Connect Users access to corp directories and additional phone features.
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