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The Scandinavians behind
Skype What is Skype? Skype What? Free of charge? Yes, as good as it sounds. Thanks to Skype, telephone bills are a thing of the past for millions of people around the world. Skype can be downloaded for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and Pocket PC, and it is available in 27 languages. A Scandinavian IT story Everything started when Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis met in Denmark while working for European telecom operator Tele2. Their own backgrounds were different: Niklas, born in Sweden, had finished his degrees in Business and Computer Science at the Swedish University of Uppsala. Janus, born in Denmark and ten years younger than Niklas, had left school to go travelling around the world and afterwards started his worklife answering calls at the helpdesk of a Danish internet service provider. The two workmates had many ideas and entrepreneurial visions in common, so they decided to have a go at it. At first, they created the portal Everyday.com and the Danish internet service provider Get2Net. Their next creation was Kazaa, which became the world’s most popular internet software with more than 370 million downloads. Niklas and Janus sold Kazaa in 2001 and started working in other innovative ventures such as Joltid and Skype. The Scandinavian duo founded Skype in 2002 as a revolutionary application built on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) technology, or in other words, the transmission of voice traffic over the internet. However, not everyone saw it that clear in the very beginning. Janus Friis said that "When we went out and said that we would make phone calls free of charge, it wasn't really a success. We didn't have any money. Investors found it a strange idea”. Things of course were to change pretty quickly. In October 2005 Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis hit again the headlines by announcing the sale of Skype to eBay for about USD 3 billion. The conditions of the sale were that Skype was to remain independent and keeping its focus on voice communications. At the same time, the integration with eBay and PayPal will accelerate the growth of Skype and make it the voice of the internet. The sale of Skype to eBay was quite a good deal for the Swedish-Danish partnership. Janus Friis is now reputedly Denmark's second richest man - just behind shipping billionaire Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller. Yet, little has changed for them. Niklas and Janus are still working and managing Skype, and living their lives as they used to live them before. Niklas is married and enjoys sailing, skiing and outdoor activities. Janus is a very reserved person who keeps enjoying his skydiving, pool, martial arts and winter sea-bathing. Why is Skype going to change the world Skype's most popular product is a free software application that allows users to make phone calls over the internet to any other Skype user, anywhere in the world, free of charge. Internet free phone calls are set to change dramatically the market of telecommunications companies in the long term. Some large telecommunication companies such as Cable & Wireless have realised that and are already testing VoIP technology. Other companies are still waiting to see what happens. For some of them, their reaction may be too late. Regarding the future development of the VoIP on the telecommunication markets Janus Friis said that “We believe it's not the big that beats the small; it's the fast that beats the slow”. So, if Skype users can speak to other Skype users for free, where is the company making from? The answer is to be found on a number of optional and advanced services such as videoconferencing, voicemail, or the possibility to call from your computer to traditional telephone and mobile phone numbers. Skype is a free service. You can call any other Skype user, send instant messages, or to send files via the internet at no cost, as long as you like. But for those users who want a bit extra, Skype has other telephony services like: » SkypeOut, a paid feature of the Skype internet telephony service, which allows Skype users to call virtually any normal landline or mobile telephone in the world for a extremely low fee. » SkypeIn, a paid subscription that allows Skype users to receive calls on their computers dialed by regular phone subscribers to regular phone numbers. That allows you to have a telephone number of your own in any country of your choice like in the USA or in Scandinavia, even if you live in the north pole. » Skype Voicemail allows callers to leave voice-mail messages for Skype users who are not online, like a normal voicemail. » Skype Video Calling enables the option of video conferencing. In November 2005, Skype had 54 million registered members in 225 countries, and was available in 27 languages. During its short existence, the program was downloaded almost 165 million times. In 2004, the company had 15,000 downloads per day; in 2005, they increased to 150,000 downloads per day.
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