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The Maturing of VoIP By John Abbott, Bentsen Grove Resort Computer Club

Back in the days of 1200 Baud modems and 13” monitors and CP/M operating systems we had a neat program called Backmail. Backmail allowed us to actually communicate directly with another computer owner any place on the planet – well almost. The alternative then was a dial-up bulletin board where we could leave public and private messages, and download some software. Looking back on that now it seems surreal. Black, green or amber monitors and 8” floppy disks and hard drives were only on mainframes. But we could communicate with friends that had the same program mounted and their modem set for auto answer.

Since you are reading this on your computer, you are very aware that the state of communication has advanced phenomenally. Processor speeds are now measured in Gigahertz rather than 8 or 10 megahertz. And with that processing speed comes power to really communicate. Instead of the 1200 Baud modem – I actually had a white paper published showing that the upper limit for serial communication was 1200 baud – well who knew about digital central offices and compacting codex? And instead of an 8” floppy we now have 300 Gigabyte hard drives with Terabyte drives coming at the end of the year. And processor chips now come with up to 8 cores – like having 8 processor chips doing the work of one.

One of the technologies made possible because of all this blinding speed is Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) There was a blizzard of small VoIP programs when the technology became available. However, the quality of most dial-up connections made the packet delay create a machine gun sounding speech and although it was fun we weren't really communicating.

In August of 2004 Skype was launched. The last conservative estimate put the Skype download at over 40 million. That means there are a lot of people taking advantage of its features – the biggest being free phone calls to any other computer on the planet – definitely. But it goes beyond computer to computer now. Now you can call people with Skype on their land line phone, their cell phone or their palm pilot. And with the advent of broadband, the quality of the sound meets or exceeds the telephone.

The sound can exceed that of the standard telephone because you can use your sound card to enrich the tone quality and the volume control to tune that sound to the right level; something you cannot do with most telephones. And depending on the quality of your microphone you also have a very handy speaker phone. In the event that you desire a little privacy a simple headset (earphone and boom mike) or a handset (standard looking telephone receiver) and its as good as the phone. And unlike a cellphone you can boost your microphone input to the point that the other party can hear you whisper.

Skype has a very dynamic contact list. You can group contacts by type – such as business contacts, family contacts, friends or frequently called – you make up the directory and you get to name the groupings. But it certainly makes looking up a contact a lot quicker than anything else I've used.

I subscribe to the Pro version of Skype and I pay $29 a year for it although you can subscribe for $3 a month. However with Pro I can make unlimited telephone calls to any telephone or cell phone in North America. I can also call much of the world for 2 cents a minute. I have a nephew who spends a great deal of time in Bangkok Thailand and using SBC the rate was 30 cents a minute. Now that I have convinced him to install Skype, I can call him free of any charge and talk for as long as we want.

I can also call forward or call transfer. If for instance you call me and in the conversation we decide that we want to call our friend up in Michigan, I can call and then join the conversations – or I can call and then transfer the call to your Skype.

In the event that the rest of your family is asleep and you want to run silently, Skype also has a chat feature built in. You can reach any other Skype contact directly in the Instant Messenger (IM) mode. My daughter and I chat via IM when her family is asleep. My granddaughter and I do a combination – I talk and she types. With six people sharing the computing power in her home she rarely has access to the microphone!

And yes, Skype has all the features of a standard telephone except 911 emergency dialing. Because I have a Skype-in line, when I call you my Caller ID will show you my name and the telephone number you can use to call me back on a non-skype system. Currently my Skype-in (call my Skype from a standard phone) is a toll charge for my neighbors – so I maintain my minimal AT&T service.

When I had tested Skype long enough to be certain that it would work I terminated my long distance with AT&T who graciously charged me $21 for the privileged of not using it – you know like they charge you for not listing you in their directory? But I have dropped my AT&T service down to well under $20 and have saved $33 a month in billings from them. And I can make all the long distance calls I want and talk as long as I want for less than $2.50 a month – the fee for AT&T long distance interface plus the per minute AT&T charges – and taxes.

So what happens if you call me and my computer is not turned on? Well my Skype system is still active. We have a wireless Skype that plugs directly into our broadband (DSL) line. The phone will ring if you call on our Skype line or our AT&T line. And the phone shows the caller ID in both cases. If you have talked to me on the phone in the last two months I was probably on the Skype phone. I actually used Skype to call the AT&T service center to cancel my long distance and they complemented the quality of the connection.

Skype is growing daily in its acceptance. As I look at the banner on the bottom of my Desktop Skype I notice that there are 8,107,703 people on-line at the moment – all talking for free. So having all of that isn't enough? Well Skype's last edition has a video port – so the video phones HAVE arrived!

If you would like to read a more polished presentation you can find that at http://www.skype.com/intl/en/download/

And while you are there reading – the download only takes a couple of minutes.

And if you want a demo – call me on Skype using jcabbott as the user name. OR you can dial in on (956) 242-2850. Or better yet – drop by for espresso and biscotti and you can make your own calls.