Skype hype to soar as 100 billion minute milestone reached

By Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 18 February 2008 10:35

Opinion and Analysis

Skype, the p2p Internet phone company that has put the fear of God into just about every telecommunications company on Planet Earth, has reached a milestone that will have those telcos quaking in their boots even harder – 100 billion Skype-to-Skype calls that were, effectively, free – while also winning an award for their ‘paradigm shifting’ 3 Skypephone.

It’s official – people love Skype so much that they’ve helped make over 100 billion minutes of free Skype-to-Skype calls since their popular Internet phone call software debuted to the world in August 2003.

Skype’s Villu Arak celebrated the occasion by noting that 100 billion humans have “walked on this planet through the ages”, that the human brain has “about 100 billion neurons”, that Austin Powers' nemesis Dr. Evil wanted to hold the world to ransom for 100 billion dollars (which Dr. Evil later upgraded to one billion, gagillion, fafillion, shabolubalu million illion yillion… yen) and that Skype has served 100 billion minutes of Skype-to-Skype calls.

Now, to be fair to Villu Arak, he did say that he wasn’t 100% sure about the first three examples of other 100 billion milestones, which was meant to be in jest, but he was over the moon about the last 100 billion milestone which he was happy to be officially quoted on.

Arak said that: “This figure is so mind-numbingly large that it’s nigh impossible to wrap my head around it. (Even if attempted, the exercise would likely result in a headache of cosmic proportions that no amount of pickle juice can possibly cure.)”

He also asked us all to consider that Skype-to-Skype voice and video calls are free, that Skype has been around for about 4.5 years, that at the end of 2007 Skype had 276 million registered users, with 30 million of those added in Q4 2007 alone.

Arak noted that “when mixed together, this cocktail gets explosive. And it becomes obvious that at 100bn minutes, Skype conversations are really getting out of hand. In a good way”.

Are Skype calls really free, though? And what about the award for that 3 Skypephone? Please read onto page 2.