http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-technopolis24jul24,1,7217270.column?coll=la-headlines-technology
Hello, World! It's Internet Calling.
Computer-to-telephone services from Skype Technologies and Vonage provide
cheap connections. But the quality varies.
David Colker
LA Times
July 24, 2005
Internet communications company Skype Technologies has gained a worldwide
following over the last couple years for one major reason: free phone calls
anywhere.
Actually, they're computer-to-computer calls, via the Internet. All that's
needed on each computer is a broadband connection, Skype's free software, a
microphone and a speaker.
The problem is that both people need to be at their machines at the time
the call is made. And you can't call anyone who is not at least somewhat
computer savvy, thus eliminating much of my family.
But what if the complications were cut neatly in half that instead of
computer-to-computer, the calls could be computer-to-phone? That way, a
computer user could call any regular telephone in the world. The person
getting the call wouldn't even need to own a computer.
That's exactly the service that Skype and another company, Vonage Holdings
Corp., are offering. Skype calls it SkypeOut, and for Vonage it's SoftPhone.
The computer-to-phone calls are not free, but they're cheap, especially on
Skype. From Los Angeles, I could call land-line telephones anywhere in
Australia, France, Britain, Russia, Spain and other countries for the
service's lowest price about 2 cents per minute.
Contrast that with fees at long-distance telephone company MCI Inc. First,
you have to buy one of its domestic long-distance plans. Then an additional
$4-a-month international plan, plus per-minute charges of 7 cents to call
Britain or 23 cents for Russia, to cite a couple of examples. (Making
overseas calls without the international plan is ridiculously expensive:
Britain is $3.55 for the first minute and $2.56 for additional minutes;
Russia is $6.83, then $5.84.)
But you get what you pay for, and when you call the old-fashioned way you
usually get a fantastic connection perfect for conversation.
In several SkypeOut and SoftPhone calls I placed to countries around the
world, the connection quality varied greatly never as good as on regular
phone lines but usually adequate. In only one instance was the connection
unusable.
Installing the downloadable SkypeOut software was easy, both for Windows
and Macintosh computers. Then by credit card I bought 10 euros' (about
$11.90 at current exchange rates) worth of calling time. (Because Skype is
based in Luxembourg, it deals in euros.)
First stop, Silver Lake. I called animation writer Charlie Howell with
SkypeOut as a test. "It sounds a bit like you are talking through a kazoo,"
he said, "but I can tell it's you and I can understand everything."
Charlie sounded terrific on my end: Instead of hearing his voice in the
little speaker of a telephone, I was getting it from a set of Bose computer
speakers.
Next, I called David Gritten, a writer who lives in London. "You sound like
you're on a speakerphone," he said. There were occasional dropouts that
caused us to miss words here and there, but we're all used to that from
cellphones. More unsettling were delays in words coming through, making
conversation a bit stilted in the beginning.
That happens sometimes because voice data, like all other types of data on
the Internet, travel in minuscule packets that are reassembled upon
reaching their destination, explained Maribel Lopez, a telecommunications
analyst at Forrester Research.
A tiny delay in packet arrival probably won't be noticed if the data are
text or a graphic for a Web page. "But voice conversation is different,"
Lopez said. "It's very delay-sensitive. There can be pauses that are
unnatural in conversation."
After a few minutes, David and I found ourselves automatically compensating
for this by pausing a second or two more than usual between each other's
speaking. Eventually, we got so wrapped up in exchanging the latest news
about family members and friends, that for long stretches I forgot about
the unusual nature of the call.
Next I called Shanghai. It was 2 a.m. there, but luckily Times business
reporter Don Lee was still awake. The delays were a bit more pronounced
than in the call to England but not bad enough to discourage conversation.
The rate for the call to China on SkypeOut was about 2.6 cents per minute.
Still not bad, but some calls can be a good deal more. SkypeOut to the
Philippines is 19 cents per minute, Nicaragua 21 cents, Pakistan 26 cents
and Ethiopia 44 cents.
The rates are based solely on destinations. That 2.6-cent fee to call
Shanghai from Los Angeles would have been the same had I been calling there
from London or Moscow.
In a few countries, the fee varies based on the area. Calls to most of
Mexico cost about 10 cents per minute, but to Mexico City and Monterrey
it's about 2 cents.
Computer calls to cellphones can be much more expensive. I called my friend
Yasushi Zenno, a New York-based architectural historian on an extended
visit to his family in Tokyo, at a rate of 2.3 cents per minute. If he had
been on a cellphone, however, it would have cost about 15 cents per minute
using SkypeOut.
Vonage's SoftPhone calls seemed to be near identical in quality but
generally more expensive. Firstly, its software, unlike Skype's, is not
free. The company, based in Edison, N.J., charges about $21 for it,
including an activation fee.
The software is not as user-friendly, and the cost of calls is often
higher: The rate for calling Britain was 3 cents per minute, China 10
cents, Russia 12 cents.
The one major flop was an attempt at calling a friend in Australia, on both
SkypeOut and SoftPhone. The connections were so terrible that we could
catch only a few occasional words not enough to make any sense of the
conversation.
If you must have an absolutely clear, consistent connection, nothing beats
picking up an ordinary telephone.
But I probably would have never talked to my friends David, Don or Yasushi
this month if not for SkypeOut.
It's not trouble-free, but what's a little trouble if it strengthens
friendships?
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
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