Skype Blogs

I have some very exciting news to share with you today. In the past couple of days, we and eBay have reached a settlement with Joltid regarding our dispute with them. This has extremely positive implications for us on three critical fronts:

• We will now have ownership of the software previously licensed from Joltid, so we’ll be in control of our technology future.
• All litigation against eBay, Skype and the investor group ends, so we’ll be free to concentrate all of our efforts on building the world’s greatest communications software.
• Joltid and Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis will join the investor group and the Skype board with a 14% share in exchange for providing Joltid software and a significant capital investment, so we’ll benefit from their expertise, vision and continued commitment to making Skype a long-term success.

This is fantastic news for us, clearing the road ahead and making what was shaping up to be an exciting journey, an unbelievable journey.

Onwards!

More financial details in the press release.

A sneak peek at the ad – if you’re reading this post in an RSS reader, click through to skype.com/magic to see it in all its glory.

You may remember that we announced our partnership with CNN back in September - well, the second of our ads has now started appearing.

It’s the perfect way to introduce friends and family to the world of Skype on mobile phones. Just point them to skype.com/magic to find out more.

You can also follow @skypemobile on Twitter to catch up on all of the latest news from our mobile team. See you there

Great news for those of you who make calls to Inmarsat satellite phones - you can now call them using Skype.

Take advantage of our super-low rates: from just €1.80/$2.62/£1.64 per minute.

If you have loved ones stationed on ships or oil platforms, Skype can make it just that little bit easier to stay in touch. By making calls more affordable, you can spend that little bit longer catching up, sharing news and telling bedtime stories.

You can even call satellite phones from your mobile phone using a Skype To Go number - meaning that you can say goodnight to your partner while you're doing the grocery shopping, or just have a chat with them from a park bench on a sunny afternoon.

You'll need to buy Skype Credit to get started - you can pay for it using credit or debit cards, PayPal, bank transfers and vouchers from supermarkets and convenience stores, depending on where you live.

Let us know how you get on

A small connection fee applies to all calls to satellite phones.

Just watched this great video about intimacy in online conversations - Stefana Broadbent finds that on mobiles, 80% of a typical person's calls are made to 4 or 5 people; on Skype, they're to just two people.

She also talks about the way that video calls connect families; how else do you have dinner with your family back in Sao Paulo when you're in Italy?

Well worth watching

Jessie Dylan (related) gathered up some of the Internet's pioneers – no idea how Skype's Chris Libertelli sneaked in there – and produced this video. It has to be one of the best overviews of why Net Neutrality matters.

Just think - without an open Internet, the millions of hours of free voice and video conversations which have already happened today between people using Skype, simply might not have been possible at all.

Jean-Jacques Sahel leads Skype’s Government Relations team in the EU.

After the US FCC, Canada, Google and Verizon speaking in favour of the open Internet, the EU needs to commit through action

At the beginning of last week, the CEOs of Skype, Sony Electronics, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other Internet, telecommunications and media firms published an open letter to the US Federal Communications Commission to support the proposal to introduce rules to protect the open Internet, i.e. users’ right to access and use what they want online, which we applauded earlier.

Also, in a joint blog posting released late Wednesday, US network operator Verizon Wireless CEO Lowell McAdam and Google CEO Eric Schmidt said they think it’s important for the Internet to remain an unrestricted and open platform.

On Wednesday the Canadian authorities issued a framework by which they will judge whether Internet service providers are discriminating against certain kinds of traffic and content. Then on Thursday, the FCC voted 3 to 2 in favour of developing into formal rules a set of six Internet Principles, designed to safeguard the open Internet.

And in Europe? Well, Skype is of course still arbitrarily blocked by a number of mobile operators, across several EU countries. So are thousands of VoIP and Peer-to-Peer applications. We hear however that the European Commission has circulated a draft declaration on net Neutrality which mentions the ‘high importance’ it attaches to ‘preserving the open and neutral character of the Internet, taking full account of the will of the co-legislators now to enshrine net neutrality as a policy objective and regulatory principle’. The Commission goes on to promise a review of the problem will be carried out, with recommendations made to the European Parliament by late 2010, monitoring the market in the meantime and stamping out on abuses using its existing powers. This act of faith by the EU for an open Internet is welcome.

But so far, we’ve seen no action by the European authorities to stamp out these blatant abuses of what Internet users can do online. The excuse that ‘net neutrality is an American problem’ just doesn’t wash anymore; it’s too convenient and simply not true, as millions of users and thousands of VoIP, peer-to-peer or video streaming innovators can attest because they are blocked or their traffic degraded by operators throughout Europe, just like Skype. The fact that politicians haven’t heard about their problems is because these guys are just too small – they don’t have armies of lobbyists like the big operators do.

The thousands of innovators that depend on an open Internet to continue to innovate and put their products, applications, services and content online cannot wait years for lengthy political debates to take place, or for the market to ‘correct itself’ – they’ll have gone bankrupt before then. Users cannot wait either, before they can freely use what they have paid for – full Internet access, whether it’s fixed or mobile.

People started complaining about high costs of calling from abroad on mobile phones in the late 1990s – it took 10 years and the market didn’t correct itself so we ended up with the so-called Roaming Regulation to force prices down. Now, with the threat to the open Internet that is on our hands, we cannot wait: the European Commission should be bold and use any of its powers (such as the new Roaming Regulation or its mandate to preserve the functioning of the internal European market), to stamp out abuse, at the earliest opportunity. If it needs more powers, then the Commission should make legislative proposals to get them, urgently.

And remember: you can sign the open Internet petition for Europe, and feel free to talk to your parliamentarians and write to your regulators to protect Your Internet.

At Skype, we’ve been tweeting for a while, but I thought it was worth doing a quick roundup of our various accounts. Some of them you may already be following, and some you may not – I’d also like to introduce Josh’s brand new account, where you’ll be able to keep up with thoughts and insights from the man at the top.

• @skype — news and updates
• @joshatskype — tweets from the top
• @peteratskype — help, advice and fun stuff
• @skypegear — hardware reviews and updates from the Skype Shop
• @skypemobile – everything you need to know about Skype on mobile phones
• @skype4business – helping your business save time, save money and stay ahead with Skype
• @skypejapan – news and updates in Japanese

Change often starts with having a conversation. At Skype, we're proud to enable global conversations that can help end poverty. We are partnering with the United Nations Millennium Campaign to foster conversations about the most important issues facing our generation during "Stand Up and Take Action!," the annual mobilization where citizens gather at events around the world to demand that world leaders eradicate extreme poverty by 2015.

As part of the program, for the first time, Skype is collaborating with Ustream to enable video calls about global poverty between world leaders, celebrities, and citizens globally to be broadcast on the internet live via Ustream's interactive video broadcasting platform. The Skype calls will be broadcast on both the Stand Up Take Action! page on Facebook and Ustream's web site.

Those participating in the Skype video calls include former Irish President Mary Robinson, as well as African entertainers Femi Kuti and Angelique Kidjo. The calls will take place throughout this week, leading up to the "Stand Up and Take Action!" weekend on October 16-18 when millions of citizens will take part in activities demanding that world leaders keep their promises to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

We hope you will join us to stand up to poverty by engaging in your own dialogues about this global crisis and what can be done to eradicate it. To find out how to get involved in "Stand Up and Take Action" events happening across the globe, please visit www.standagainstpoverty.org.

I'm excited to tell you that Sten Tamkivi, our Chief Evangelist and GM of Skype Estonia, is now an advisor to Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves in the areas of information technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

This is an incredible personal honour for Sten and we are humbled to have such an individual as a key part of our team here at Skype.

As an Estonian, I'm proud of the country's achievements in the area of technology innovation and the impact it has had on the society. I'm sure there are many more novel ideas coming to life in and from our small country.

As a Skype employee, I am excited to see that world leaders have recognized the innovative spirit that lives within our organization and that they are now turning to our six-year-old company for advice in these areas.

As someone who has known Sten for years, I know that he is up for this challenge, which will call upon his skills as a communicator and entrepreneur, as well as his passion for all things innovative. We wish him well, knowing that he will work hard to ensure that both Estonia and Skype retain their places at the technology innovation table.

Oh and by the way, this new advisory role doesn't mean Sten will be leaving Skype!

Congratulations and well done Sten! (Or 'Hästi tehtud, Sten!' as I would write on our Estonian blog)

I’m Neil, Skype’s General Manager for our global consumer business. What does that mean in simple terms? That I’m responsible for managing our desktop product lineup – Skype for Windows, Mac and Linux – as well as looking after our website, our online marketing and the Skype brand as a whole.

I don’t do this all single-handedly, thankfully, and I have a great team here at Skype who contribute to the incredible products we make. Nevertheless, there are some areas where an outside perspective can be invaluable, and that’s why we’ve just appointed three great agencies to help us develop the Skype brand and help us with our global advertising. The Skype brand isn’t just about our logo, or clouds and rainbows. It’s about what you, the Skype user, think about us as a company and the products we make. How you feel about your experience of using the Skype software, and how you describe Skype to your friends.

Wolff Olins, TBWA\ and Rapp will be our partners on our journey to enhance this iconic global brand and all that it means to you, and I’m looking forward to working with them in the months to come.