Boingo teams up with Skype for laptop-to-telephone calling.IMAGINE a wireless service that allows you to make unlimited calls, anywhere, for $7.95 a month--a fraction of the typical cell phone bill. Boingo Wireless Boingo redirects here. For the Hoodwinked character see Boingo (Hoodwinked). For the rock band, see Oingo Boingo. Boingo Wireless is a private American company that provides wireless communication services, specifically Wi-Fi. Inc. has a plan. The Santa Monica-based operator of wireless Internet "hotspots" has struck a deal with Luxemburg-based Skype Technologies S.A., the free Internet phone service See VoIP. . Boingo wants to turn its worldwide assemblage of hotspots into phone-spots, offering not just computer access to the Internet but voice access too. Skype allows users to make "phone calls" from their home computer to a friend's computer for free, through Internet connections--called voice over Internet protocol See Internet and TCP/IP. (networking) Internet Protocol - (IP) The network layer for the TCP/IP protocol suite widely used on Ethernet networks, defined in STD 5, RFC 791. IP is a connectionless, best-effort packet switching protocol. . The new service, called "Skype Zone," allows users to make phone calls through their laptops on the Boingo network for $7.95 a month. (Boingo's existing subscribers pay $21.95 a month for a broader set of services, including Internet surfing, instant messaging Exchanging text messages in real time between two or more people logged into a particular instant messaging (IM) service. Instant messaging is more interactive than e-mail because messages are sent immediately, whereas e-mail messages can be queued up in a mail server for seconds or , music streaming and e-mail. They can use Skype for no additional charge.) The companies will co-market their products and share in the revenues generated by the new service. Skype's founders, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis Janus Friis (b. 1976) is a Danish entrepreneur best known for co-founding the file-sharing application KaZaA, and the peer-to-peer telephony application Skype. In September 2005, he and his partner Niklas Zennström sold Skype to eBay for $2.6bn. , were behind Kazaa, the free peer-to-peer file-sharing program A file-sharing program is used to directly or indirectly transfer files from one computer to another computer over a network (e.g. the Internet). While the term may be used to describe client-server disk sharing (also known as shared file access or disk mounting), it is more that's been vilified by the recording and entertainment industry for illegal file sharing Copying files from one computer to another. See peer-to-peer network, file sharing protocol and file and printer sharing. . But the pair's current venture has all the free features and none of the guilt of Kazaa. Over the past two years, Skype has gained 45 million subscribers worldwide, and its free software has been downloaded more than 130 million times. The company also offers a paid version, Skype Out, that allows 1.5 million subscribers to make computer-to-phone calls for about 2 cents per minute. Founded by Sky Dayton of EarthLink Inc. fame, Boingo has a network of 18,000 hotspots worldwide--in airports, hotels, stores and cafes. As Skype makes agreements with other hotspot operators, they will be brought into the Boingo network, said Scott Miller, director of retail services for Boingo. The next step is extending the service from laptop computers to a new crop of devices coming out with Wi-Fi chips: cell phones, PDAs, game consoles, and cameras. "Skype is a much bigger step forward for us," he said. Staff reporter Hilary Potkewitz can be reached by phone at (323) 549-5225, ext. 226, or by e-mail at hpotkewitz@labusinessjournal.com |
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