So to answer the question: what social and economic forces shape the telecommunication infrastructures, lets look at Skype again. Economically, since Skype makes use of telecommunication systems that are already in place, Skype makes use of existing technology and therefore they can provide their service much cheaper than traditional phone systems. Skype will beat competitors international rates just about every time, because it has lower overhead and thus can pass that savings on to the user. Social, people want convergence. We see this and know this is true because of products like the Apply iPhone. People want devices and software that can do "All-in-One" features. Skype meets this demand by offering many features that it customers can take advantage of. The network infrastructures that provide Skype the ability to work will keep up with the demands of users as more and more products seek to be on the web and as Moore's Law continues to play out. People have push for more bandwidth and the infrastructures have grown accordingly, look at 3G and 4G technologies and how far they have come along since the smartphone was invented not that long ago.
One of the questions that was asked that I left thinking about was internet regulation and how that might affect Skype. I don't for see any major regulation affecting Skype, even though it is a heavy bandwidth application, it uses no more resources up than what Netflix's might use as it streams movies or to its customers. I don't believe that Skype is a Monopoly, nor will their be any regulation against it, like I mentioned tonight there are several other companies that can provide their services just as well and I don't think Skype will get themselves in that situation. Also, Skype gets around alot of possible regulation as the government does not consider them as true VoIP service provider, since they can not provide 911 emergency calling.
All in all, I thought my presentation went very well tonight and I enjoyed learning about Skype and hopefully teaching others of its many benefits.
-Jeremy Carter
Monday, April 18, 2011
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