When transatlantic telephone calls first became available in the Twenties, a three-minute call from London to New York cost close to £10 - almost a month's wages for the average working man.
Today, the same call can be made for nothing. You can stay on the line for a week if you like.
And not only will the sound quality be as good as if the other party was sitting right next to you, but you will be able to see across the ocean as well, in full-colour video - for no cost beyond a penny or two in electricity.
Such endless, free global communication has become possible because of Skype, the oddly-named computer service which software giant Microsoft bought this week for more than £5billion.
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| Cost-effective: Skype saves people vast amounts of money |
Launched in 2003, this free and simple-to-use computer programme turns any broadband-connected computer into a phone for both speech and video calls to hundreds of millions of other Skype users.
It works because even basic broadband internet connections can carry a vast amount of information ('data') and a Skype call (technically known as VOIP - Voice Over Internet Protocol) piggy-backs on broadband.
You must download Skype (free, of course) from www.skype.com to the computer. You then choose a Skype name for yourself - your name or nickname, or a number if you prefer - and you're a Skype user.
Not a penny need change hands. And you're ready to go - simply type in a normal phone number or another Skype user's name and the computer will dial for you. The microphones on your computer should pick up your voice, and the person you're chatting to can be heard through its speakers.
And there is no catch whatsoever; no secret charges; no intrusive advertising; no nasty surprise when you pay your monthly broadband bill.
You can even dial normal phones and mobiles worldwide from Skype - not for free, but for a tiny charge compared with normal phone charges. I pay just under £50 a year for unlimited calls from my laptop to any UK number, from anywhere in the world.
When travelling, which I do a lot, I used to spend £50 a day or more on rip-off hotel phone charges. Today, those calls from hotels cost nothing, as many hotels don't even charge for broadband any more, especially in the Far East, where it is normally included in room charges.
The only complaint anyone has about Skype is that the calls sometimes 'drop out' - jargon for being cut off - and you need to interrupt a conversation to redial. But since you're paying nothing, you can hardly demand your money back.
Skype is how canny people save vast amounts of money and get a better service than phones provide. Relatives in distant countries, students travelling on gap years, parents on business trips reading bedtime stories to their children thousands of miles away .?.?. everyone is doing it.
In fact, people are getting blasé about it. I Skyped my niece when she moved to Australia last year. We chatted about this and that, then she took me on a tour of her new house by carrying her laptop from room to room. Some time into the call, she said: 'Is there anything specific, uncle? I kind of have a few things to do.'
Businesses are using Skype massively, too, slashing communications costs to almost zero. A company I know in the Midlands has a factory and warehouse in Taiwan. They leave a Skype video link to Taiwan on 24 hours a day.
If you want to speak to someone at the factory, you just stand in front of a big TV with a camera above it, see who's available in Taiwan and discuss whatever needs to be discussed. It's like a window to the other side of the world - except, of course, nobody under 30 considers it a wonder at all. It's just?.?.?.?normal.
All very well, you say, but somebody must be paying for such an extraordinary service. It used to be said there's no such thing as a free lunch. In the internet age, as we all know, it's possible, in a manner of speaking, to have a free breakfast, lunch and dinner.
There is free email from dozens of services like Hotmail and Googlemail, free web searching from Google and other search sites - imagine how much we would all have to spend if you had to pay for Google - free social networking from Facebook and others, not to mention free news from media websites all over the world. The internet is based, it is often said, on a peculiar new 'economics of free'.
But Skype somehow seems almost more ridiculously, disturbingly free than other sites. How can something like that possibly work?
And why would Microsoft, one of the most financially sharp companies in the world, spend more than £5billion on a company which, despite having almost a billion customers, still has never made a farthing, which indeed, lost more than £4million last year? Would Microsoft like to pay me a fat sum for my overdraft?
Welcome to the Mickey Mouse world of online businesses, the only sphere other than the military where you can have a gigantic, global brand which leaks cash like a colander - and nobody appears to mind.
Skype's previous owners, the auction site eBay, tried doggedly to get it to make money, but to no avail.
Some believe Microsoft is planning for a future in which consumers use a vast range of services on mobile phones or lightweight tablet computers and that Skype's video-calls will be an important part of that.
But it is also probable that Bill Gates's company plans to make Skype a free bolt-on to their Windows operating system to tempt back the millions of people who have defected in recent years to Apple computers.
If that happens, Skype might become unavailable on Apple computers. But you could imagine such a move being the subject of a legal battle in the litigation-loving U.S.
Many fear Microsoft's corporate mentality will ruin Skype, and that in an attempt to make it pay, Gates's men will destroy the simplicity which has made it so popular. Either that or they will plaster the beautifully clean and simple site with advertisements.
There's another possibility, too. Image is all in the internet world, and Skype has a cool, untainted image. It could be that the human calculators at Microsoft have worked out that £5billion is a small price to pay for the global public to love you - and to think of your brand every time they dial up a loved one.
© Daily Mail, London |
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