Skype Down -- So Much for Telephone Replacement
I set up a new home office and decided to try to go without calling Verizon and having them charge me $50-plus a month for a largely useless copper landline. I have my cell phone. I have broadband. I have Skype. I have a cool wireless Skype handset from US Robotics. So I bought a Skype phone number and went for it.
For the most part, it's been great. I make most of my office calls on Skype and the quality is good if not better than a regular phone line -- and of course it's cheap as dirt. It has voicemail -- more functional than a landline's. I can call out and people can call me.
So far, so good -- until today. Skype has been out most of the day, which has made me realize that the one last strength of standard phone company phone lines is that nearly 100% reliability. The question is: how close to 100% is good enough for most people? I'm wondering right now how that applies to me.
UPDATE: The Skype news just gets worse...
- Verizon Employees Caught Snooping on Obama's Phone Records
- Nov 21 2008 1:23PM EST
- Google CEO Touts Green Energy Shock Doctrine
- Nov 21 2008 12:03PM EST
- First Bytes: Dell, Sezmi, Facebook, AP, DOD, Verizon
- Nov 21 2008 9:03AM EST
- Last Bytes: Teens Online, G'N'R, Victoria's Secret, more
- Nov 20 2008 5:16PM EST
- Online Ad Revenue Up
- Nov 20 2008 4:19PM EST
- BlackBerry's Storm, and the Continued Quest for the Perfect Phone
- Nov 20 2008 12:57PM EST
- Only Slightly Chipping Away
- Nov 20 2008 11:47AM EST
- Sweet Stream o' Mine
- Nov 20 2008 10:25AM EST
- First Bytes: MacBooks, Google, Mozilla, T-Mobile, Yahoo
- Nov 20 2008 8:58AM EST
- Last Bytes: Tweetag, Microsoft, Yahoo, more
- Nov 19 2008 6:43PM EST
- Ballmer: Microsoft "Done" With Yahoo Buyout Talks
- Nov 19 2008 6:33PM EST
- Online Holiday Shopping Looking Grim
- Nov 19 2008 4:14PM EST
- "Purple" Problems at Yahoo
- Nov 19 2008 2:13PM EST
- Google's ASCAP-for-Books Moves Forward
- Nov 19 2008 11:46AM EST
- If You Do the OLPC Give/Get Thing, What Happens on the 'Give' End?
- Nov 19 2008 9:22AM EST
Categories
Links
- Mark Cuban's blog

- TechCrunch

- GigaOM

- Engadget

- USA TODAY Tech

- Romenesko

- BuzzTracker Tech

- Roger McGuinn's Folk Den

- Maney's band on MySpace

- Spiedies, mmmm

- Somewhat Frank's tech conference list

- Tom Foremski

- Fred Wilson

- Pandora

- SciTech Daily

- Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog

- Steven Johnson

- The Long Tail

- paidContent

- John Battelle's SearchBlog

- Marc Andreessen

- Kevin's site

- Kevin Maney & His Briefs on CD Baby










