you get monkeys

What can you expect from a free phone service?

Skype lost it around a year ago. The call quality seemed to drop really fast within a short period of time. Shame really, it was a great service.

"This is my main business line"

Well it shouldn't be. Simple.

Skype has no uptime SLAs, it's service is for home users. Businesses use it at their own risk.

Its worth delving a little deeper and asking how Sype connects to the real phone networks, landline and mobile- Whether they have proper workable agreements with contracts and SLA's in place for terminating their voip traffic or whether they might be doing it the cheaper way ?

Until I knew this i'd never consider buying any shares in them nor relying on them for my main business line....

Estonians or Russians, 6 of one - half dozen of another, all the same, can't take the blame when it's THEIR fault.

Who ya gonna blame this time, Skype?

"...especially as the traditional telcos don't seem to be providing a much better service these days."

How so? If a BT provided business line goes faulty then there ought to be a really serious problem for it not to get fixed the same day.

Telephone lines may not have much of a margin but they're still bread and butter business to "Traditional Telcos". It's unfair to suggest that standards are slipping to those of services such as Skype. Bear in mind that the majority of PSTN equipment is almost 25 years old and still working well for the most part, and will only be replaced in 2011 when 21CN is fully enabled.

It's funny. All of the tech companies have the worst phone lines these days. I guess it's because all of the technology related businesses love being on the bleeding edge but anytime I call another IT related business I prepare myself for garbled sound, frequent dropouts and delays that make carrying on a conversation very awkward at best. We're sticking with good old fashioned pots lines at our small business until VOIP is proven. It just works and keeps us from looking like a bunch of cheap techno-weanies to our customers.

YAY! You're back! We wuv your pointless off-topic flames! ----<--{@

If the telcos are worried about Skype they could just adjust their tariffs accordingly.

As any sensible business they won't do that until forced, but that's why I like the pressure that Skype has provided - it's a shame they are having problems.

Or would there by any chance be any relation between the problems and the fact that Skype hurst their business?

As for outages - I haven't noticed them as I got called just this evening by someone via SkypeIn..

Should come as no surprise after all, it is owned by eBay!

I've been waiting a year, A YEAR! for eBay to sort out my account, which was hijacked, a phreakin year!!!

It is my worst CS experience to date and I never thought anyone would top my experience with Pipex.

That comment about you pay peanuts...you are presumably comparing Skype with a traditional telco, however, Skype had no infrastructure to build or maintain (servers aside), so should therefore be able to supply a service for peanuts.

Seriously, if you're going to rely on a service, which I'm 99% sure that says they dont guarantee any level of uptime, and NOT have a backup plan in case it goes wrong?

You deserve to loose the business. If your earning thousands of pounds relies on a phone, then you need to ensure its always there, and not pinch pennies.

> What can you expect from a free phone service?

SkypeIn isn't free.

Unfortunately, the Registers "unbiased editorial checker" program was down again today. So daft ill considered comments like this are getting through by unqualified journalists.

The service is beta. They tell you this. Anyone who relies on it for a main line is stupid, and *cannot* complain when SkypeIn goes titsup.

Well, they can. Obviously. But we know who to shoot first when they open their gobs.

I'm not renewing my SkypeIn subscription for much the same reason, but I only got it as a bit of a laugh to see how it worked and stuff like that. It's difficult to link a fixed, traditional POTS number to something that can go online and offline so easily.

But yes, Skype CS sucks. Ebay CS sucks. While we're on the topic, PayPal CS sucks too. I wonder - is anything linking them all together?

It really has not been the same since it sold out to ebay :(

I dont think anyone except perhaps ebay expected it to be.

ebay paypal skype whoever trusts this group is looking for disappointment and loss of money they don't ever have any

intention but selling you a headache however cheap it may be.

Nope it isn't (I have skype and a Skypein number myself) but the point I am making is that whether you are using the free or paid for portions of the service, it utilises the same infrastructure which was originally designed to provide a free service whereas a traditional telco's infrastructure is designed to provide a paid for service and so they invest heavily in it because they know if it breaks down completely their customers will go elsewhere but there is no such pressure on Skype, particularly as its now owned by tatbay, err sorry ebay.

I wouldn't trust Skype to replace my home phone let alone use it to run a business.

Don't get me wrong, I love Skype Out. I get a years worth of unlimited calls to my friends and family for $30.

At that price I don't care if the service is down two days a year.

Actually what I am most afraid of is that they will start investing the money necessary to be 99.999% reliable.

Somehow I don't think they can afford to do that while still charging $30 a year.

Those Thai ladyboys always seem to get through OK... but i suppose it depends what business you in...