Skype To Gradually Wipe Out Traditional Phone Business
LIKE most people doing important jobs in Estonia, Sten Tamkivi is alarmingly young. He is 28âpractically a greybeard in a country that once had a 27-year-old foreign minister. And like many Estonians, he is reticent and modest. Asked for his job title, he looks apologetic. âI think I am director of operations,â? he says. âWe’re not that big on titles.â?
Most people in his shoes would be boasting. Mr Tamkivi runs Skype, one of the software world’s most subversive and fastest-growing businesses.
Founded by a Swede, Niklas Zennström, a Dane, Janus Friis, and a group of Estonian programmers, Skype’s proprietary, voice-over-internet-protocol (VOIP) software allows its 113m registered users to call each other free of charge.
The company makes money, on the other hand, when its customers place calls to traditional telephonesâbut these are still extremely cheap.
Skype and other VOIP companies threaten to undermine incumbent operators’ pricing structures and gradually to wipe out the traditional, high-margin telephone business.
Face value | Communicating the Skype way | Economist.com
Photo by lusi.
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