Slide 1

GL-eNestl Skype Functionalities Free peer-to-peer calls from PC to PC Very cheap to call traditional phone numbers (SkypeOut, free in North America) and receive calls from traditional phones (SkypeIn) New services such as Skypecasts: Live and moderated conversations with a virtual microphone being passed around Up to 100 people to talk to one another Numbers 250 million downloads 6 million concurrent users on March 26, 2006 100 million registered Skype names on April 27, 2006 Slide 2 GL-eNestl Skype SkypeIn Personal (regular) phone number with voicemail Up to 10 numbers available per subscription (United States, United Kingdom, Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland) Callers pay local fees Callee accessible anywhere in the world 12 months subscription 30 Slide 3 GL-eNestl Skype SkypeOut Calls to traditional landlines or mobile phones Users buy Skype credit for their account Straight price per minute rate In January 2005, SkypeOut 72% cheaper than Tele2 Switzerland on calls to France, Germany, and USA Skype for Pocket PC to make free voice calls with WiFi or UMTS connections Slide 4 GL-eNestl Skype Voice-over-IP (VOIP) Architecture Slide 5 GL-eNestl Skype Issues Proprietary and undocumented software (blackbox) Peer-to-peer applications with clients on fast connections acting as supernodes: 100 Mbit/s connections potentially saturated Firewall bypass: potential use to hack corporate networks Banned by several large organizations Competition Latest versions of Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, Microsoft Live Messenger, AIM offer similar functions Applications based on standard VoIP protocols