Skype

I remember my friend James once telling me: "You know it's viral when  your DAD tells you to download Skype." He said this not knowing that my father really did tell me to download it.

But I never saw the big deal behind it and never really used it until recently when I needed to talk to Stephen in HK while I was still out in SF. Now that I'm in HK I use it all the time to talk to people back in the US.

Just recently I bought some SkypeOut credit in order to take care of a few things back in the States where I actually needed to call a phone number. The first number I called was a local business in San Jose and was charged a whole 4 cents for 2 minutes. Not bad. But the next number was a 1-800 number and much to my surprise, cost me nothing for 15 minutes! As it turns out, calling toll free numbers in the United States (and a handful of other European countries) is free!

Curiously, one of the next numbers I called was AT&T because it looked like they were trying to ream^H^H^H^Hpull a fast one on me and drop in a few final charges. Cingular used to always make these "mistakes" (not surprisingly always in their favor). It had some sort of caller ID service that identified the number as being in the 202 area code (Washington DC). I wonder if this is what all other caller ID users see?

So between calling friends/family on their computers for  free, calling businesses for free via 1-800 numbers, and using my $10 SkypeOut credit for the rest (Althouh now I'm afraid it's going to expire in 6 months from disuse...) I think I have all my telephony bases covered.

Now, if only I could transfer my US cell number to SkypeIn...

On the flip side, a friend's father was sold a complete Vonage package deal for his home about  2 months ago and that's been nothing but a disaster for him. I even took a look at it and my conclusion was that their VoIP router was seriously jacked up. It would disconnect internet users when people called and disconnect phone users when people tried to use the internet. For this type of service, Vonage actually canceled their phone/DSL service and signed them up for cable  broadband. They do this because the VoIP router manages the telephone lines in the house (thus potentially conflicting with the phone company's service) and allows you to use your normal phone to make calls. 2-3 VoIP routers and several service visits later, they eventually dumped the system.


(disclosure: I own shares of Skype's parent, EBay)