Last week Skype launched a new campaign in Britain, called Talk for Britain. Under the deal, UK users get free SkypeOut calls to UK landlines for six months when they buy £10 Skype credit.
Skype needs to work hard to promote itself in the UK: I’m just not aware of any major use of it outside the tech community, and the fact that we don’t have free SkypeOut for everyone over here doesn’t help. When people are unhappy with BT (the telecoms giant) for whatever reason, they tend to switch to other traditional providers, such as TalkTalk, rather than looking at the rather more radical VoIP solution. This is despite a good take up of high speed broadband and the potential for massive cost savings.
To be honest, I’m not sure this campaign will have much effect. The biggest stumbling block for Skype reaching the mainstream is that it requires you to have your computer switched on to make and recieve calls. Another issue is the fact that, as far as I know, you are forced to prepay for your calls. I would expect mainstream consumers to be happy to embrace Skype when they are able to use it like a normal phone service, but cheaper and with more features. At the moment it requires too much of a break with traditional phone usage habits.
I think we will be seeing many more devices which allow you talk without having your computer on, and through promotions and slow word of mouth critical mass will build up. Once this has happened, Skype will ‘do a YouTube’ and start to experience exponential growth, as people other than the techie neighbour persuade their friends to switch over to save them money.
On a lighter note, in order to promote their deal, Skype also did some research on UK phone use, with some rather interesting results. Apparently, three quarters of us chat to people on the phone from the toilet, and nearly a quarter have fallen asleep while talking on the phone. It’s good to be armed with the facts when working out what the future for VoIP is!
