2006-10-30

Is Skype NOT VoIP?

Business Contact is a 3-monthly IT-magazine for Small Businesses in Belgium. It is a completely free and commercial magazine. Their September number has an article on VoIP. I translated the title, and the first paragraph from Dutch:

What is VoIP?"

"Let us first tell what it isn’t: it isn’t free World-wide calls, it isn’t Skype™, it isn’t being able to call only those people who also have VoIP, it is not restricted, you don’t loose all the possibilities of your telephone switchboard and your current infrastructure doesn’t have to be thrown away immediately.


Funny! Skype is VoIP, is free, i can call other people who don’t have VoIP, i have no telephone switchboard, and the day Skype will offer Belgian SkypeIn numbers, i could throw away my current subscription to my telephone company and even the PSTN phones i have.

One of the partners of the magazine is Belgacom, the biggest and former public phone company of the country :-)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Technically they are correct though.

VoIP is not Skype, but that does not mean that Skype is not VoIP :)

Jean Mercier said...

yes, i agree, but somehow this is what they are suggesting: Skype is not VoIP ;-)

Anonymous said...

This is what I will do - cancel my landline and get one of those standalone wi-fi phones and a SkypeIN number. Sorry to hear you cannot get one yet :(