James Enck has an unfair advantage, he’s in London, so news about Skype dropping their prices hits him first. That’s why he’s clearly worth reading.
The question on my mind is not how low can prices go with telco. Everyone knows the PTT’s and RBOC’s have been milking the market for years. The real question is at what point does the QoS portion of the network get marginalized.
Unless the QoS is guaranteed, all of the cheaper rate so called minute stealers will only be good for the consumer, not the business grade customer. As a professional communicator, I can’t not be clearly heard. That’s the real issue. No CEO of a Fortune 100 company would call his or her board member to discuss serious business on a sub standard telephone line knowingly. I pity the fool in IT of one of them who ends up with an “off brand” network.
Andy says–Be wary of to low of a price, as we all know we get what we pay for.
Interesting, Andy. I’m on a Mac and just last week downloaded Skype. I love it in principle, and to a lesser extent, in practice. I “Skyped Out” last night to my dad, on the PSTN in Chicago. He said he was surprised how clear I sounded. But I found the quality on my end to be rough (but no more rough that my own POTS line this morning, which for the third time in a month became practically unusable because SBC is having some sort of local switching problem in my part of Berkeley).