Five Reasons Why We Should Say “Thank You” To Skype

For me it’s a no brainer, Skype has been the most disruptive thing that has happened to the telephony industry in the last decade. Since its launch, six years ago, Skype has taught us a lot of important lessons and there are many reasons why we should say “thank you” to the people who brought Skype to the market. Here are a few.

1) VoIP works

Thanks to Skype, millions of consumers have realized that VoIP actually works. This was a very important point since lots of big and small players were  able to approach the market more easily and users became less reluctant to try out a new VoIP solution. In my experience, this was a pretty common opinion before the arrival of Skype: “naaa, VoIP is something for geeks only, it doesn’t really work”.

2) Standards? What standards?

People don’t really care what’s behind the scenes, they just want something that works. Even better, something that works well and all the time. Skype taught everyone in the industry that SIP and H323 were just acronyms for engineers and a protocol can quickly become a standard if the majority of users are actually using it. See next point…

3) Innovation

Do you know that Skype is considered the #1 competitor by many big telecom operators worldwide? Do you know that many telecom operators worldwide design new services using Skype as their main point of reference?  This is huge. It’s yet another way that Skype has disrupted the telecom industry and is still the main threat for many operators. And, it’s one more reason for operators to innovate, lower the cost of new services for the final customers and create opportunities for suppliers of new services/technologies — never a priority before for operators.

4) It’s just a dumb pipe

Free. Millions of users realized that voice can be actually free if used as we use email, instant messaging and browsing.  Just pay for a broadband connection and use it.

5) Ecosystem

Since the launch of Skype, the size of the ecosystem of players built upon the new revenue streams and new businesses created around it are impressive. New business models have been invented, new and innovative services that rely on Skype have been launched, new companies created, and new opportunities have appeared for the end user to leverage the power of Skype in many ways.

When I started working in this space I had a dream: I wanted to create something new that could make the difference. Skype did and I learnt a lot from its story. What about you? Please, add your points and leave your comments below!

Skype — it’s something huge to say “thank you” for, isn’t it?