Hacker News Reader

Comment by cabalamat | Hacker News Reader

I'm not bothered by this, because it's their funeral. There are other VoIP programs, it's not particularly difficult to write one, and with Android set to dominate open-architecture 3G phones, something else will dominate VoIP. Hopefully, something open source and using an open protocol. (SIP?)

Oh and if you bought an iPhone and can't access the cost-free VoIP solution? That'll teach you to buy locked-down hardware, you idiot[1].

1: this description does not apply to people who took an eyes-open decision to buy locked-down hardware, knowing it was locked down, realising the consequences and accepting them.

View on HN

It's not easy to create a competitor to Skype.

Skype's main attraction is not the technology, but the network effect and it's closed system. You could make a cool SIP client for Android/iPhone/etc. but it wouldn't matter because you wouldn't be able to talk to 90% of the mundane's who only have Skype.

Skype's network effect and lock-in is extremely small compared to something like Facebook, or even something like an IM network.

Think about it: early adopters (techies) start using a free competitor (or several free competitors). They get their less tech-savvy friends and family to switch. The rest of the world follows. It's easy to explain ("It's like Skype"), the carrot is obvious ("except it's free"), and the lock-in is minimal - download a new client, enter the contact you want to call, and you're done. There's no chat history, or complex social network, or tons of uploaded pictures, etc. etc., to keep people from switching.

I don't think the "mundanes" really use Skype, they still use regular phones. If someone's savvy enough to use Skype, they're savvy enough to switch to a free competitor if it's good enough.

Quote: I don't think the "mundanes" really use Skype

You are wrong based on my experiences. Skype is used for free international calls all over the world by "mundanes". Immigrants use it to communicate to their home countries. A local immigrant-run mom&pop store in my Helsinki neighborhood is even advertising Skype-calls in addition to normal international calls.

And I think that Skype has some brand value as it's been used for these very personal calls between family members.

However, you are right that the network effect for Skype is not that strong: As it's used for "calling home", a hypothetical better and "cheaper" Skype-competitors can spread family-by-family, as it's easy to replace only two endpoints. But it will nevertheless take several years, which gives Skype time to adjust their strategy.

Semantics - I just don't see any point in calling Skype users "mundanes". They had the incentive to learn how to use the technology because of the cost savings, they'll have that incentive again in the future if it becomes necessary. I think we're basically in agreement.

"Skype's network effect and lock-in is extremely small compared to something like Facebook, or even something like an IM network."

Skype is an IM network. I really hate that I have to use it sometimes for that.

Last time I checked Skype's user count was above 500 million and they have 50+ million daily active users. Their network effect is pretty huge.

That really depends on the average size of someone's network. How many networks are only composed of 2-3 endpoints? (most common example - talking to family "back home"). Compare to Facebook's 100+ average network size.

It is humungous, to be sure.

The only reason skype is the king right now is because nobody has motivation to switch to anything else. Skype works, without hassle. It's a good product.

The moment it ceases to be a good product, though, there is nothing holding them in their marketplace. The world can hop onto a new piece of p2p VOIP software in the blink of an eye.

> Skype's main attraction is not the technology, but the network effect

I agree. Having said that, it's not difficult to change to another system. I'm a member of an organisation that has weekly VoIP conferences. We used to use Skype, but that proved problematic when more than 5 people were involved. So we (fairly painlessly) moved to another solution. Other people, if they find Skype painful, will move too.

iPhone? I'm sure this will apply to Skype's Andrioid client, too. (Also, "you idiot"? Really?)

I'm pretty sure he was talking about Apple having the opportunity to block competing VoIP solutions (say Google Voice). With Gizmo going to Google you can bet that they will be doing really interesting things with SIP on Android.

Background VoIP support in iPhone OS 4 suggests Apple has no intention of blocking these apps; in fact, it seems that they're encouraging them. And as I understand it, G Voice is not a VoIP solution yet. (And that's not to say I agree with it being blocked. On the contrary, their UI — the supposed rejection reason — doesn't look much different from the other dialer apps, including Skype.)

As far as "competing VoIP solutions", it's not like Apple is competing in the VoIP arena; they seem perfectly content to let other companies battle it out.

Can you explain what this has to do with the iPhone hardware? Skype is charging for this, not Apple or the telcos, right?

> Can you explain what this has to do with the iPhone hardware?

Nothing, cabalamat is just hating.

Far from it. If Apple has an off-switch for any potential competitor to AT&T, which any VoIP provider is, then the only way for another VoIP provider to take on Skype on the iPhone is to have enough market share outside of the iPOS garden to make it too costly for Apple to hit the kill switch.

My guess is Google is gearing up to do to VoIP what it did with email.

"gearing up"? You can use GTalk since 2005. It's available to anyone with a gmail address. And you get free GTalk-to-GTalk calls.

It's not free in the sense that you're still using your regular phone minutes. For those of us without unlimited talk minutes, this can matter.

Skype won in part because other attempts at VoIP didn't work very well. There are lots of practical problems in just getting a p2p connection to work, there are often firewalls to route through. Trying to debug these is not helpful when you're just trying to find a way to talk with your mom.

I'm guessing the reasoning behind this is that phone based Skype calls actually cost Skype money because more data has to be routed via them rather than the peer-to-peer infrastructure that regular desktop Skype uses. If there's a technical reason why this is the case (i.e. you can't use peer-to-peer on phones because of bandwidth issues) then I can't see how a competitor would be able to undercut them without finding someone to subsidise it.

What are some good alternative providers?

Gizmo5 used to be a good alternative, and got purchased by google.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com