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It's hardly surprising that so many people ask "How does Skype work." There are over 500 million active subscribers and it's not uncommon to see over 23 million of them concurrently logged on. Despite these numbers the Skype phone service is amazingly robust and apparently capable of handling an unlimited number of users.
Buy Skype Credit - make cheap international calls Free VoIP Phone ServiceWhat is even more amazing is that the Skype online phone service enables users to make free online phone calls. In fact most subscribers have never paid a cent to use the service. It's no wonder that so many of us want to know how this free Internet telephone service works. When Skype started up in 2003 it was one of the first VoIP phone service providers. Instead of using traditional public switched networks and the associated infrastructure it used technology that enabled voice to be sent over the Internet. Because the Internet doesn't belong to anyone, it's free to send data (including voice) over it. What is Skype?However, the fact that Skype is a VoIP phone company does not fully the answer the question "How does Skype work." Today there are hundreds if not thousands of VoIP phone service providers, but very few of them can provide a free international VoIP service. Although they can also use the Internet as a network, they have other overheads that Skype doesn't. Skype's overheads are much lower than most of it's competitors because it employs an unstructured peer-to-peer network architecture. Every Skype user or node both consumes and supplies network resources. They include: disk space, processing power and bandwidth. On the other hand most of Skype's competitors employ switches that host their networks centrally. While it gives them greater control, they must supply the infrastructure and continuously upgrade it to meet the demands of growth. Free Online Phone Calls"Skype" and "free phone calls" have become synonymous terms. Skype was the first phone company to use free phone calls as bait to hook customers and it worked. The entrepreneurs who started the company anticipated that offering free calls would be more successful than conventional strategies such as spending millions on advertising. Of course not every Skype phone call is free. It's only the Skype-to-Skype calls that are free. It was a simple but brilliant strategy. Every new subscriber ends up selling the Skype phone service to his or her friends and family, so they can all enjoy free phone calls to one another. It's a much more effective way of selling phone services than television advertising, but Skype had the added advantage of being the first to do it. Final ThoughtsSkype works because it was the first to do a number of things right. Our feeling is that the most critical was it's use of free phone calls to achieve rapid growth from a standing start. If Skype hadn't acquired customers as quickly as it did, it would have disappeared long ago. The key was to achieve overnight momentum and critical mass before any competitor could present themselves as serious alternatives to Skype.
How Does Skype Work? - Related ArticlesBest Skype Cordless Phone - Skype headphones are adequate, but cordless phones are a preferred alternative. iPhone Tips and Tricks - get more from your free Skype download. Skype Video Phone - use a high quality Skype video phone once and you will be hooked. No other cheap home phone service can match Skype video conferencing. Skype Fax - is it the ultimate free online fax service? GE Cordless Telephones - GE Skype Phone - no need to learn how to use Skype. Free Skype Download for iPhone - one of the most popular apps for iPhone. From How Does Skype Work? to Skype Free Download From How Does Skype Work? to Best Cordless Phone Reviews and Ratings |
 
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