NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: STEVE TAYLOR AND LARRY HETTICK ON CONVERGENCE 10/04/04 Today's focus: Skype moves from P2P to P2PSTN
Dear [EMAIL PROTECTED], In this issue: * Skype enables calling between PC and PSTN-connected phones * Links related to Convergence * Featured reader resource _______________________________________________________________ This Newsletter is sponsored by Lucent Technologies FREE EMA ANALYST REPORT Streamline VoIP Management and boost your bottom line! This Enterprise Management Associates white paper highlights strategies you can use to optimize VoIP through automated IP address management with market-leading solutions like Lucent VitalQIP(TM) DNS/DHCP & IP Management software. http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=83728 _______________________________________________________________ ARE YOU UP TO DATE ON THE EVOLVING STANDARDS AND REGULATIONS? Sign up for Network World's Standards and Regulations News Alert. This weekly alert covers what new standards are emerging, how they are progressing through various standards bodies and how you can take advantage of those standards. Plus, readers are kept up to date on actions by government regulatory bodies that may affect their service providers. Click here to subscribe: http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=83518 _______________________________________________________________ Today's focus: Skype moves from P2P to P2PSTN By Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick Over the past few months, we've been contrasting the capabilities of various messaging services. We found that AOL Instant Messenger, Windows Messenger and Skype each had sufficient strengths and weaknesses to make it impossible to declare a clear winner. But Skype, which already had arguably the easiest-to-use "click to talk" capabilities, recently upped the ante considerably by offering gateway services to the PSTN for most of the world. PC-to-PC calls have always been available with Skype at no charge. With the PC-to-PSTN option, Skype's pricing structure is set such that calls from a PC to many countries in North America, Western Europe and Australia are all the same fee per minute. Since the pricing is in Euros, we'll explain. Calling credits are purchased in increments of 10, 25, or 50 Euros. Then the calls are charged on a per-Eurocent basis. For instance, calls to landlines in the continental U.S., Canada, Australia, France, the U.K., and several other countries are 1.7 Eurocents per minute. There's no discount for calling within your home country. Using a conversion rate of 1.233 U.S. dollars per Euro, this is about 2.1 cents per minute. For domestic calling within the U.S., this is good, but not earth-shaking. It's important to note that the rates to a country are the same regardless of whether you're in that country or not. So the rate of 2.1 cents per minute to the U.S. is a much better deal when calling to California from France than it is when calling from across the country, across the state, or across the street. Also, the flat rate for calls, say, between France and the U.S. is even more attractive for calls _to_ the U.S. than for calls _from_ the U.S. because the price for PSTN calls is generally much more expensive for calls to the U.S. from Europe than for the same call from the U.S. For international calling, this can be extremely attractive. For instance, this week Larry is traveling in Europe. Steve called Larry at his hotel in Paris, and they talked for a little over six minutes for 15 cents. On another occasion, Steve talked to an associate in the Netherlands for 15 minutes for 32 cents. And while the call quality was not perfect, it was certainly acceptable. Next time we'll look at some of the details of this service. RELATED EDITORIAL LINKS Skype rates http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/ Currency conversion http://www.xe.com/ucc/ Cisco deals kick VoIP market into high gear Network World, 10/04/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/100404ciscovoip.html 3Com, Toshiba launch convergence gear Network World, 10/04/04 http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2004/100404iptelexpo.html _______________________________________________________________ To contact: Steve Taylor and Larry Hettick Steve Taylor is President of Distributed Networking Associates and Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of Webtorials.Com. For more detailed information on most of the topics discussed in this newsletter, connect to Webtorials.Com <http://www.webtorials.com/>, the first Web site dedicated exclusively to market studies and technology tutorials in the Broadband Packet areas of Frame Relay, ATM, and IP. He can be reached at <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Larry Hettick an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience in voice and data. He is currently Vice President for Wireline Solutions at Current Analysis, the leading competitive response solutions company. He can be reached at <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________________________ This newsletter is sponsored by Altiris In this era of online self-service, system availability is mission critical. Access to CRM, ERP and SFA systems are constant demands of the workforce. Ensure true 24/7availability and world-class customer satisfaction by learning about the Best Practices of automated Patch Management and Software updates. 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