News Skype creeps under phone giants' radar

News.com reports on Skype's ever widening infuence in the VoIP market, and the fact that the trad telecom companies don't seem to be noticing it:

At a time when major U.S. telephone operators are spending billions of dollars to expand, telephone software maker Skype on Tuesday says it's building a global phone network virtually for free.

New renditions of Skype software for Linux and Macintosh operating systems are expected to become available on Tuesday. The new releases are a significant expansion for 17-month-old Skype. Since its debut, Skype's free software only worked on Microsoft devices, though test versions of the Linux and Macintosh software have been available since last year.

Skype's latest software arrives at a time when many elite U.S. phone companies are consolidating with others in multibillion dollar deals that let the communications giants expand into new markets and territories. Using the merger-mania as a backdrop, Skype's new software releases should put even more fright into traditional telecom executives.

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Nice to see that the other Skype clients are out of beta. Guess I'll have to go and download the OSX version

 

i use skype on pc and my ipaq and it's brilliant - sound quality is at least as good as normal landline and even to get through to a normal phone can be fantastically cheap (e.g. 1.1p/min UK to US)

 

Sometimes use it in cs cos we dont have vent yet. Its really easy to use and dont take up much bandwidth or cpu. Ive not used it to call mobiles or landlines yet.

 

I personally recommend it - it works great on my broadband connection. Been using it to keep in touch with my sister, since it's way cheaper (free) than talking using mobiles between here and Oxford. (We both use Skype, and have both got broadband)

Audio is almost CD quality. Well, not quite, but still way better than normal telephones.

 

Skypes great, i use it as a teamspeak in cs source.