Skype users can attest to the excellent voice quality and unbeatable features of the free and popular Voice-over-Internet Protocol client. Even when calling from a dial-up connection, the audio fidelity is simply amazing—it’s like you’re in the same room with your correspondent. There is also a minimal lag, which disappears altogether if you’re on a high-speed Intenet connection.
Advocates of open-source software and standards, however, are not so happy with Skype for the reason that the company does not conform to open standards, nor does Skype openly provide its application program interface (API) to the public. Therefore, interfacing with other software may be difficult and can sometimes be costly for a software developer. The API is also limited, in that there’s only so much an add-on application can do.
Why is this relevant? To date, there is no interconnectivity between Skype and other software VoIP providers, except probably for those have their own telephone numbers, which can be dialed using SkypeOut. So, for instance, you can’t call your friend on Google Talk or FWD from Skype. I find this very limiting, compared to SIP, for instance, which is an open protocol used by various providers in the industry like Vonage and FWD. Skype’s closed nature can spell demise for the company in the future, when VoIP’s popularity skyrockets, and providers get to adopt or license other technologies