Simon’s Blog

Is it just me, or is the forthcoming addition of video to Skype looking like too little, too late? A couple of months ago, I pretty much stopped using Skype. The reason? MSN caught up and then surpassed Skype in terms of voice quality. And, of course, MSN can already do video chat. And, I’m afraid to say, MSN has a better user interface than Skype. Skype Out doesn’t do it for me either - I can easily afford to make the calls to mobiles and landlines that I need to make: the traditional telecomms companies offer some amazingly good call packages these days, including unlimited free calls in some cases (yes, free is even cheaper than Skype).

For me - Skype need to focus on making their system better than using a regular telephone or VOIP handset for regular calls. Better features for managing calls (in and out of regular telephone networks), better features for conference calls, new features for integrating incoming calls with computer systems (e.g. press 0 to hear information on xyz) etc. They have a lot of work to do.

It will be interesting to see if Skype can step up their game to really compete, and become a truly great IP telephony system… as opposed to looking like a poor imitation of MSN.