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Skype Down So Much For Telephone Replacement

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by Kevin Maney
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Aug 16 2007 12:00am EDT

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...

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