The Problem With Skype

By adopting a closed protocol I don't think Skype will last far into the future. And I mean like 10 years or so. Certainly Skype is low cost but there needs to be a revenue model in there somewhere. This can be done I am sure, you hire a tutor to help you with your maths and you are billed at an agreed upon per-minute rate by Skype, who then takes their cut and deposits the rest into the tutors account. And then of course there is always phone-sex. And then SPAM, which could be brutal. One of the things to worry about with the Skype user base is that they are CHEAP. A low cost device is one thing, but it also means the end users care about the difference between $100 a year; grinding money out of them might prove to be too hard. A per-minute SIP DID is now about $2 a month, less than SkypeIn, and some with unlimited inbound at $6 a month. So who cares about price when the price is so low it doesn't matter either way? I will pay more for SIP for the ease of using an ATA and cordless phone, and not needing to by a Skype only handset which could also be defunct in who knows when. SIP isn't going anywhere.