VoIP Toolkit

Skype: Do you get what you pay for?

Ben Charny CNET News.com

Published: 21 Feb 2005 12:55 GMT

He lives in the United States. His fiancée is in Great Britain. He uses voice-over-IP (VoIP) phone service Skype to keep romance alive and phone bills low.

But there's trouble in paradise. The suitor says his cut-rate phone provider suddenly left him in the lurch, thanks to a billing glitch that's prevented him from using his account.

"I am sure they will straighten things out in a day or two, but if not, I will simply notify my credit card company to reverse the charge," he wrote in an email to ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com, requesting anonymity.

Among a crowded field of Internet phone providers, Skype has turned heads with its unique blend of technology, grassroots marketing and rapid adoption. In the 18 months since Skype launched its product, the company claims 74 million downloads. The company is currently signing up about 60,000 new registered users every day -- numbers that draw comparisons to free software downloads that swept the Internet during the late 1990s, such as the ICQ instant messaging service.

But the honeymoon may be coming to an end for the upstart phone provider as it branches out of its core free service into new paid offerings.

In recent weeks, there's been a spike in complaints about the company's first commercial service -- SkypeOut -- that lets customers cheaply make calls off the Internet to ordinary phone lines. Aside from having to wait days for accounts to be credited -- as the anonymous suitor and dozens of other customers have complained -- many SkypeOut users say their conversations are disrupted by a two-second delay between someone speaking and being able to hear what was said.

"It makes communication impossible," one unsatisfied customer said. Others complain that some calls aren't going through at all, and if they do, you can't hear the other person on the line, though they can hear you. For a few days last week, some people couldn't call US phone numbers.

Skype spokeswoman Kat James acknowledges problems but says the customer numbers tell the bigger story.

"Skype constantly monitors call performance across the global network of users and seeks to enhance quality through continuous product development," James said. "As our growth indicates, we have a huge number of satisfied customers."