Is Skype heading for a meltdown?
By Erna Mahyuni
If Skype was a celebrity, it would be the tech equivalent of Britney Spears, minus the hit album. What with eBay’s declaration that it ‘paid too much’ for the VOIP solution and the bizarre decisions that Skype’s made in the past few months, not to mention the disappointment that is Skype’s latest version, drama on the horizon is as predictable as Kevin Federline obtaining custody.
Take the PR disaster of Skype’s taking away SkypeIn numbers from paying customers. ZDNet’s just reported some of those customers will be getting a year’s free use of their new SkypeIn number. Skype’s Villu Arak attempted to explain that debacle in a post on his blog, saying that the loss of the numbers was caused by a breakdown in negotiations with the telcos who rented them those numbers.
But Don McQueen, the chief executive of GCI Telecom said the simple fact was Skype wouldn’t pay the fee to renew the rental, or so he told PC Pro.
Then there’s the total absence of a customer support number or email on the site, where the support you can hope for will be received…in a minimum of four days. That’s after you use the ‘handy’ web interface which is the only point-of-contact for support.
That doesn’t bode well for a company who’s trying to prove its worth after eBay publicly stated that Skype wasn’t worth the more-than-2-billion paid for it and is trying to push itself as a viable corporate solution.
Fact is, there are open-source SIP offerings out there that can possibly rival Skype, not to mention similar services like Gizmo, Jajah and yes, Google Talk. For a list of alternative VOIP solutions, have a look at Voip-Sol.com’s mentions.
Predictions – unless Skype cleans up its act, there’s the possibility of eBay just cutting its losses and selling the company and its holdings to someone more capable of leveraging what Skype can offer…like Google.
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November 26th, 2007
I am an ex-customer of Skype and have suffered at the hands of their approach to managing 0207 numbers. Skype have offered us no refund in terms of the cost to our business in changing a number on hard copy material, just a 12 month free rental – something that they own already and effectively costs them very little.
We have moved, along with a host of others, to a professional service known as voipfone. They have been extremely helpful and have supported us at a very difficult time.