Narendra Nag, New Delhi, India.

19th August 2004

The lure of free international phone calls has led 20 million people to download Skype, a free software that promises to address everything that's wrong with internet telephony — poor voice quality, dodgy prices and hard-to-use interfaces.

Skype is the world's first peer-2-peer (P2P) telephony software. The people behind it, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, know a thing or two about P2P software. Their last product, Kazaa, enjoys the enviable reputation of being the world's most popular P2P file-sharing software.

P2P networks work on a simple principle: the more the number of users, the more powerful the network. Instead of using a centralised server, P2P networks use member computers as servers. This brings down the cost of technology significantly and, according to Skype, improves voice quality by allowing data to be transferred more effectively.

While dial-up users may still have some problems, the recently announced broadband policy holds out the hope of high-quality, free calls becoming a reality soon.

For those familiar with instant messaging (IM) tools like Yahoo IM or MSN Messenger, the software will look like an old friend. All that is needed after downloading it is a set of speakers and a microphone. Other Skype users can be added as friends and calls to them cost nothing, no matter which part of the world they are in. While IM tools from Yahoo, MSN and AOL also allow 'voice chat', most cannot match the sheer voice quality that Skype currently provides.

Skype also allows calls to landlines or mobile phones at 'nominal rates'. Modelled along the lines of pre-paid mobile phones, talk time on Skype can be bought using an international credit card. While existing players charge around 5 cents a minute for a call to the US, Skype users may pay as little as 2 cents per minute.

Net telephony

What you need:
* The software — download from www.skype.com
* A multimedia PC with Net connection