Have you ever used Google, Skype, YouTube or MySpace? Well if you have, you are part of a future which will be increasingly web-based with voice data and video services delivered in an open model. It’s goodbye to paying locked-in subscriptions.

A new report shows that Skype has changed telephony from a telecoms service to a web application. Obviously, this has not resulted in everyone throwing away their handsets, but it has put those involved in the industry on guard.

If vested industries (for example banking, media, advertising, telecoms, music and entertainment) do not adapt to change, their services can move to the web. This could mean that they would lose control over them and, if they are not careful, be relegated to the status of pipe operators or commodity products.

Of course, Skype and other Internet-based companies are also beginning to provide a whole new range of applications – applications that the slow and unimaginative telephone companies would never have provided – such as Skype video and eBay. These will lead the way towards further (integrated) voice applications.
Skype has given rise to so many changes in the telecoms industry that all involved in the industry have been forced to rethink their position, and therefore their future.

With the world’s communication systems becoming based more on software (IP) than on hardware, software glitches like the collapse of the Skype services during a weekend in August will occur. While that was unfortunate, it is also important to remember that problems like that are not unique to web-based companies – Telstra had similar total outages because of software problems when it introduced ADSL, and some years ago AT&T also experienced a massive collapse of its network.

While the telecom market continues to protect their old businesses the traditional will lose their innovative edge and become pushed into the shadow by companies such as Skype.

The telephone companies are employing a strategy of delay rather than innovation in an effort to maintain their vested interests, thereby tying customers to their proprietary products and services. The Internet media, on the other hand, are at the forefront of a move towards open networks, and it appears that in the end the open networks will come out tops.