Do I still trust Skype?
A post on Mashable after the Skype outage last week - Skype Comes Back, Do You Still Trust It?.
Yes - Around 220 million users are signed up with Skype, and at the moment around 7 million of them are online. For the last few years that I’ve used Skype I’ve never had a problem like the one that occurred over the weekend, and the reason for it is explained here: What Happened on August 16.
When you consider what’s in the package for free, or a reasonable fee, it’s not half bad. Chatting with or calling contacts, setting up conference calls with others on Skype and video calling is free. Extra services mean you can dial landlines (saving a packet, in my experience), enable land-liners to call you on a normal phone number, setup call forwarding and a cool voicemail service for a very low price.
This week alone I’ve setup an account for the podcast, where listeners can call on Skype or a Durham area telephone number and leave a message. On my own account I’ve created a local SkypeIn number for a client so they can speak to me as if I’m next door, even if we’re in different countries. When I’m away - even abroad - I can be reached on the same number without additional expense for either party.
However, an outage like the one on Thursday can be a real inconvenience, but might point to an over-reliance on something that’s essentially free for the majority of users. I have a landline or mobile number for my contacts, and could have called them without any problems. If I was doing it every day I might look at override numbers.
Comparisons made with traditional voice services and analysis of quality are fair enough. A Skype call I made today had the most atrocious quality I’ve ever heard - even when no one was talking it sounded someone like fiddling with a shortwave radio. Worth bearing in mind thought that the big telco’s aren’t without their own problems.
One I have to add to the list, unfortunately - this bug means I can’t change my status back to ‘Available’ after I changed it to ‘Not Available’ when busy over the weekend, after constant restarts and trying fixes.
For the value for money and cool services Skype offers, I’ll definitely be sticking around. The benefits outweigh any problems I’ve experienced in a few years. If there was a way just to buy a highspeed internet service and do away with line rental I’d be at the front of the queue. Primarily because my phone never rings, but also because Skype provides a more flexible and convenient service at a fraction of the price.
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