Paul Jacobson

Who needs a phone number when you have Skype?

I decided to explore VoIP options a few years ago and I was fairly excited about Skype Numbers for a while and subscribed. That gave me a local landline number which, when called, connected the caller to me through Skype. In theory it is a great idea but I found that the latency on the calls was terrible. It was about 2 seconds but it was noticeable and made voice calls painful so I abandoned the idea.

I’ve started thinking about alternatives to a regular phone number again lately and came back to Skype Numbers. I wonder if the increases in bandwidth have reduced the latency or if it is still so noticeable? Is it possible to give up a landline (or even a mobile line) and switch entirely to VoIP with notional landline numbers for legacy callers?

This idea reminds me a bit of the recently announced Microsoft Lync successor, Skype for Business:

As much as I love FaceTime and prefer the idea of Hangouts to Microsoft options, Skype is still a pretty decent experience and I keep coming back to it for video meetings with clients. Maybe its time to try Skype Numbers again?

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2 responses to “Who needs a phone number when you have Skype?”

  1. Nathan Jeffery avatar
    Nathan Jeffery

    As much as I hate to say it, Skype simply has the footprint and market penetration at the moment.

    Screensharing and Voice calling quality is great. Really great.

    I have considered a Skype for business number but haven’t taken the plunge yet as I don’t really want to be tied into Skype.

    I don’t think latency will be such an issue any more.

    I am very happy to see they will be launch Skype for the web and support WebRTC, I’ll probably format my computer when that comes out and never install the local version again. 🙂

    What I really like about VoIP is not being bothered about how long the call is and just being able to focus on sorting out what ever needs to be discussed or dealt with. An hour long call with shared screen really changes things.

    Reply
    1. Paul avatar
      Paul

      Hmm, its probably worth activating a Skype number and testing this out.

      As foe the Web version, I’d still keep a locally installed app.

      Reply

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