At The Cable Show 2011, Skype and Comcast (www.comcast.com) announced that Comcast users would be able to lease Comcast hardware to enable Skype video calling on HDTV video sets.   The service uses [...]]]>

Over the past six weeks, Skype (www.skype.com) has announced new products and/or deals with Comcast, on Android, and with Facebook. Anything else?

At The Cable Show 2011, Skype and Comcast (www.comcast.com) announced that Comcast users would be able to lease Comcast hardware to enable Skype video calling on HDTV video sets.   The service uses a little adopter box plus a customized remote to manage the Skype – and to-be-named-later apps – session to make and receive Skype video and audio calls, IM, and watch TV at the same time.

No price on the hardware has been set, but it kinda screams dead-end unless Skype is also going to offer/sell/promote this to other cable companies in the future. 

Later, Skype released Skype for Android 2.0, enabling video calling over Android in the (closed) Skype universe. Support runs over Wi-Fi or 3G, with downloads free.  Again, it’s nice, but with all U.S. wireless vendors except for Sprint rolling out data caps, I’m not sure how useful running video on a mobile phone actually is, unless you’re next to a power outlet.

To wrap up its summer of video, Skype announced a partnership with Facebook (www.facebook.com) enabling video chat within the Facebook environment.  I think the embedded video message part is the most intriguing feature of this announcement since Facebook loads itself to asynchronous-ness communication.   How it all plays out on the mobile environment will be interesting.

I suspect the Facebook announcement was the last of the group and we won’t hear any Big Deals for a while, given that Skype now has to finish being consumed by Microsoft.

Within the new Skype client, users [...]]]>

Skype (www.skype.com) has integrated the Facebook (www.facebook.com) news feed and phone book into its Windows implementation.  At the same time, the company is dumping Nimbuzz and others in a move to a tighter walled garden strategy – or it just couldn’t get any cash out of the freeness.

Within the new Skype client, users can get their Facebook News Feed, including status updates, commenting, and linking, plus making calls within Facebook either in a free Skype-to-Skype call or a Skype-Out fashion. 

I think Skype and Facebook deserve each other – as in a merger.  Facebook would get a “clean” communications channel capable of supporting both voice and video while Skype would get an application to drive minutes and usage. You’d get synergistic stickiness that could translate into more money.  Of course, Skype is currently looking at the enterprise for more revenue, so that could work well for Facebook as well.

Meanwhile, Nimbuzz and Fring have been booted from interoperating with Skype. Nimbuzz says this is part of a move to kick all third-party VoIP connections before an IPO, while Skype says this is simply a move to better manage its mobile client interactions – which is an interesting statement, given the many different mobile client relationships it has with with carriers.

Since Nimbuzz says it clocked 3.65 billion voice minutes in the past year, I suspect cash has something to do with it. Every billable minute across Nimbuzz is one less that Skype gets.

I suppose this kinda-sorta explains the origin of the rumor that Cisco was going to buy Skype.

Speculation ranges that Bates’ experience with Enterprise will help Skype get traction into the business [...]]]>

Skype (www.skype.com) has hired Tony Bates, formerly Cisco’s Senior VP and GM of Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business.  So now what?

I suppose this kinda-sorta explains the origin of the rumor that Cisco was going to buy Skype.

Speculation ranges that Bates’ experience with Enterprise will help Skype get traction into the business market, but there are bigger fish to fry.  The company has the IPO in progress, so Bates will lend credibility to that effort.

However, he will have to work to streamline and unify a company that is, according to one source, “full of lawyers” and seems to have different and conflicting agendas in Estonia, London, and Silicon Valley.

He will also have to diversity the company’s main source and means of revenue ASAP, perhaps by moving to a pre-pay/monthly fee schedule for users.

Hearsay?  Blow away all the shiny hype and Skype’s primary revenue model is pre-paid calling card without the plastic and middleman. Throw in a little old-style Telco thinking on top through SkypeConnect since business users pay for minutes between their baseline IP PBX and Skype’s network, but that’s IT my friends.

With no monthly recurring revenue, Skype is dependent upon the whims of its customer base, currently at 9 million or so paying customers. At some point of inflection, more Skype customers move to Skype-to-Skype (currently no-charge) calling (audio or video) than pay for SkypeOut enough to pay the bills and where are you?

Yes, it is nice that Avaya will be selling SkypeConnect, but this is the second or third time that Skype has launched into the business community – we’re coming up on the second anniversary of the Skype/Digium agreement/announcement and you don’t see a whole bunch of channel partners benefiting from that effort.

Corporate America might have enough to deal with in its migration from legacy to IP-based PBXes, so throwing a non-standard, pre-paid-minutes Skype network on top of vanilla SIP trunking and post-paid, reliable phone service.  Complexity is bad, simplicity is good.

Speaking of Cisco, there’s been a lot of jawing about the company’s new umi consumer “telepresence” solution.  It’s priced high ($600 list for the hardware) and Cisco – being no dummies – want $25 per month with a year commitment for unlimited video calling.  We’ll see, but it is a clear contrast pitting Cisco against Skype in the consumer video world.

*sigh*  Even Skype has abandoned this form of [...]]]>

Earlier this week, I was on a conference call for the Avaya/Skype “strategic relationship” announcement and it was so special (NOT!) to hear at least one of the reporters/analysts on the line regurgitating the whole “after all, Skype has over 500 million registered users” line.

*sigh*  Even Skype has abandoned this form of messaging – as evidenced by the Skype-spokeperson’s cite of 124 millionish “average active users” this month – but it persists.  And that’s after the S-1 filing just went and blew holes in the whole “registered users” number.

In the beginning, Skype cited “registered users” as its primary statistic for usage since it was the biggest number they could throw out there.  Two years ago, I heard at least one person who should have known better rattle it off as he touted a relationship between Skype and his company; at the time “registered users” were over 400 million.

If you’ve looked at the S-1, registered users are basically the number of user IDs people have put into the system to call other people and have no reflection on the actual number of people making phone calls and paying for services. It’s like saying “There’s over 500 million license plates out there” but that doesn’t tell me how many of those license plates are on the road at any given time – or hanging on the wall in a bar somewhere.

Someone on Wall Street probably called Skype on it, because the company now throws out the “average active users” number; i.e. people ACTUALLY using Skype in any given month, and that number seems to be hovering around 125 million or so – a factor of FOUR smaller than the whole registered user number.

Heck, I probably have at least 3-4 Skype userIDs I’ve set up and forgotten about over the years.

The best non-brainwash number to focus on when it comes to Skype’s profitability and business viability is the number of PAYING users… around 9 million or so.  Which is still a good number, and not surrounded by the bull, er misrepresentation of the “registered users” concept.

Sooner or later, I’m going to be in a public forum and someone is going to whip out “registered users” and I’m going to start shouting profanities…

In “Phase 1,” Avaya customers will have “access” to Skype Connect, so anyone running a SIP-based IP PBX will be able [...]]]>

Avaya (www.avaya.com) and Skype (www.skype.com) announced much big love and a strategic partnership today.  But the meat of the agreement won’t be implemented until the second half of 2011. And it’s not exclusive.

In “Phase 1,” Avaya customers will have “access” to Skype Connect, so anyone running a SIP-based IP PBX will be able to exchange voice-based calls – but not SILK-quality calls.

Enterprises will have to sign up directly with Skype or a Skype Connect account and pre-pay for minutes since that’s how calls traversing between the SIP universe and the Skype universe are billed. (And seriously, how old school telco is that?)

Neither side would talk about compensation around Skype Connect minutes, but Avaya Senior VP/President Alan Baratz said they’re paying Skype for tech support in implementing the SILK codec and other technology.

Further out there, in the “second half of 2011” is a promise of fully integrated functionality between Skype clients and Avaya IP-based technology, including the whole UC enchilada of presence, messaging, voice, and video.  Avaya will wrap “enterprise level control and management” around the Skype application services.

Judging from the some of the comments given by both Baratz and Skype Enterprise GM/President David Gurlé, both sides are still in process of mapping out what would and wouldn’t be supported… which makes me wonder about hitting the “second half” of 2011, unless that means making a release date announcement for support to come out in 2012…

Two years ago, Digium (www.digium.com) and Skype announced a similar love-in/work-together integration agreement and it took almost a year to get what ultimately evolved into Skype Connect to properly work with Asterisk. 

More specifically, you need a Gmail account and calls through your computer to American and Canadian numbers are free through “at least” [...]]]>

Making free phone calls just got easier through Google(www.google.com) (so long we all remember that “free” is not really free, but subsidized through someone else’s money) via “Voice Calls from Gmail.” 

More specifically, you need a Gmail account and calls through your computer to American and Canadian numbers are free through “at least” January 2011.  As is typical in the Great VoIP shell game, calls to other countries start at around 2 cents a minute to landlines, 15 cents a minute to cell phones.

One can get inbound calls through Gmail if you have  (free) Google Voice account.

Timing on this offer is everything, but when you pull up the comparison between Google’s rates and “Leading internet telephony provider,” The Goog’s per minute rates are equal to or better than “Leading.” 

If the folks at Skype haven’t already figured it out, Google is NOT their friend.

The SEC prospectus can be found here on www.sec.gov. Be interesting to see what skeletons come [...]]]>

In the usual terse manner that all companies end up with, Skype (www.skype.com) has announced it has filed a S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for a proposed IPO of its “ordinary” shares.  

The SEC prospectus can be found here on www.sec.gov. Be interesting to see what skeletons come out.

One thing that jumps out from a quick scan of the prospectus is while the company says it is 560 registered users, it only has 8.1 million average monthly paying users annnd 124 million “average monthly connected users.”

Not to be rude, but I’ve always thought the “registered users” number that the company has continually touted is, well, crap; reading between the lines on the number of “average monthly” connected and paid users and the math is pretty clear.

And seriously, hasn’t Skype run its “viral” course a la AOL and the bombardment of CDs? Everyone knows who Skype is and that’s why the Nimbuzz-es and other ankle biters are out there….

Number of shares and price ranges for the offering have not yet been determined – no big surprise there.  Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley are the “Joint global coordinators” and running the books for the offering and there’s a lot of other joint and co-involved; BofAMerrill Lynch, Barclays Capital, Citigroup Global, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities will also be acting as joint book-running managers while Lazard Capital, RBC Capital and UBS Securities will be acting as joint lead co-managers; Allen and Company and Evercore Group will be acting as co-managers.

If everyone is a “co-", who is in charge?

Last week, the company announced its SIP Phone Support (SPS) for Microsoft Unified Communications, enabling “economically affordable” connections to Microsoft OCS via standard SIP IP phones. A direct connection to OCS [...]]]>

AudioCodes (www.audiocodes.com) has gone SIP wild over the past two weeks, announcing support for Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS) and Skype for SIP.

Last week, the company announced its SIP Phone Support (SPS) for Microsoft Unified Communications, enabling “economically affordable” connections to Microsoft OCS via standard SIP IP phones. A direct connection to OCS is supported for both currently installed phones and newer models, as well as connecting mobile phones using AudioCodes’ Mobile clients with AudioCodes gateway technology.

Phone supported by SIP include (what else?) AudioCodes’ 300HD family of HD IP phones, along with other third-party phones, such as Cisco, Avaya, Aastra, Polycom and other “standards-based SIP phones.”

This week, the AudioCodes Mediant 1000 Multi-Service Business Gateway has been certified for interoperability with Skype for SIP, so customers/owners can now direct outbound calls through Skype and can also receive inbound calls from Skype users.

AudioCodes likely has more Skype tricks up its sleeve to announce in the future. The company hinted that it would incorporate support for Skype’s SILK codec into handsets, with availability later this year.

For more info–

IT EXPO East 2010 – AudioCodes hints at using SILK codec

FREETALK Connect is schedule to roll out in March and will allow SBs (two to 49 users) to enable Skype calls from supported office phones, including the “free” Skype-to-Skype calls, mange Skype contact lists, and [...]]]>

Down in Miami last week, all the buzz was around FREETALK Connect, an PBX solution built to leverage Skype.

FREETALK Connect is schedule to roll out in March and will allow SBs (two to 49 users) to enable Skype calls from supported office phones, including the “free” Skype-to-Skype calls, mange Skype contact lists, and get inbound voice calls from Skype users.  In addition, they can also participate in the Skype for SIP open beta to make low-cost global calls around the world from a desktop phone.

The box is a partnership between FREETALK and Jazinga, with the latter company providing the software platform for doing thing like callback/dial-around/ access to Skype buddy lists, auto attendant/IVR, paging, cal parking, remote extensions, music on hold, and conferencing.  The FREETALK Connect box also includes managed routes to users, phone services, and apps, SIP/Skype service management, and router management.

Supported phones on the network are auto-detected and configured by FREETALK Connect and there’s an on-screen wizard for configuring everything that needs to be configured.

If that’s not enough, FREETALK announced the FREETALK Connect Alliance, an ecosystem of 13 supporting companies for the product to provide apps, products, and services for the box.  Alliance members range around the globe from Italy to Taiwan and include Cloudvox, IfByPhone, Iotum, Jazinga, Skype, Tatung, Thomas Howe’s Light and Electric, Voxeo, and Voxbone.

The timing of this rumor/impending announcement is, shall we [...]]]>

According to TechCrunch, Google has shelled out around $30 million in cash to scoop up Gizmo5.   Of course, the rumor mill last month had Gizmo5 being bought by Skype as a SIP backup plan if they couldn’t get JoltID and various other proprietary technologies secured.

The timing of this rumor/impending announcement is, shall we say, interesting at best because it comes on the Monday after Skype had indeed kissed and made up with its former owners and had secured all the code/intellectual property it needed to continue without a cloud of lawsuits.

Let’s think this through a little bit: Either A) For some reason, Gizmo5 and Skype weren’t really getting together, or the deal was contingent upon some bizarre clause that said “If we make up with Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, all bets are off”, B) Gizmo5 and Skype had a deal, but one or the other party got scared off by the evil lawsuits of Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, and/or C) Gizmo5 has shopped itself around to both Skype and Google, with the winner being the first guy that provides a check that clears.

If Google has purchased Gizmo5, it’ll likely take about a year or more for the company to figure out what to do with it, so there’s no need to start frothing at the mouth about this being a “Skype killer” by any sense of the imagination.