Chinese company claims Skype compatible knock-off

Stan Beer
Saturday, 15 July 2006 12:44

IT Industry - Strategy

Skype has refuted claims that a Chinese company has successfully reverse engineered Skype technology, allowing it to place a receive peer-to-peer phone calls with Skype subscribers using its own compatible client.
The claimed accomplishment of the as yet un-named Chinese company was revealed by Charlie Paglee, the boss of VoIP provider Vozin Communications. Skype's scepticism would appear to be at least partly due to the fact that Vozin Communications is a direct competitor that makes a Google Talk plug-in called Talqer, which lets someone use the Google Talk to make and receive calls from traditional cell or land-line phones.

Thus, the claim that the Skype protocol has been cracked comes from a direct competitor which sells a product that competes against Skype on price. Talqer claimed a price advantage over SkypeOut for US calls but this was negated when Skype made North American SkypeOut calls free in May. Some pundits predicted that Talqer was a natural for Google to acquire.

In his VOIPWIKI blog, Paglee, whose company has offices in both the US and China, says that he received a phone call to his Skype account from a friend at the Chinese company who was using the reversed engineered non-Skype client. He went on to say that he conducted two conversations with his friend at the 10 person Chinese company, including one in which he initiated a call through Skype to the non-Skype client.

Paglee appears to be trying spread FUD through the Skype community by mentioning that the Chinese knock-off product will not support Skype’s Super Node technology which enables computers with Skype to be used as relays to carry data.

Pagle writes: "This means that very soon Skype users will have an alternative client which will not hijack their computer. This could eventually have a very negative effect on the Skype network if too many people choose not to act as Skype Super Nodes and the network starts to deteriorate."

In addition, Paglee shows his partisanship by voicing support for the reverse engineering project. He says: "There is nothing at all illegal or even morally wrong with what this group of engineers has accomplished, especially from the Chinese perspective." And also: "Skype has been playing dodge ball with the law all over the world in an effort to arbitrage third world telcos that charge high prices. While I support Skype’s efforts it is almost poetic justice that they get a taste of their own medicine."