Skype Makes Interesting Strategic Move

March 10, 2009

Way back when, after having entered the personal computer space, IBM did something that changed the PC industry for ever: They opened up their BIOS chip to others for nothing.

Virtually overnight, the IBM-compatible PC movement skyrocketed (and so did Microsoft). This one event created a de facto standard and increased the size of the personal computer industry pie for all participants.

Because of this, and my background in speech applications, Skype’s recent announcement especially perks my ears. Skype has opened an Application Programmers Interface (API) and a royalty-free licensing of a proprietary speech processing codec they call SILK. (Link: http://www.informationweek.com/news/telecom/voip/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=215800625)

This is a brilliant move by Skype.

I believe the near term effort is to get Skype standardized in mobile devices as the audio quality and low bandwidth utilization is superior over other codecs. Its dynamic range in low bandwidth situations makes it ideal as a platform chip since it readily scales to higher, richer frequencies.

I would not be surprised to soon see these chips configured in parallel form on communication subsystems and servers. The open API will attract developers, and I’m looking forward to seeing who carries the codec over into the world of open source software in support of such platforms as Asterisk.

For future thesis speculation: If I were Skype, I would be readying this position as the API adoption occurs and codec’s get embedded for a next generation codec that is seamless to the Skype API. Maybe this codec does audio—and perhaps, some video!

Add a WiMax chip next to it…I am having another vision…maybe my next start-up …

Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive

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Posted by wbrache | Filed Under Dave's Corner, Telecom news, Telecommunications bloggers 

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Comments

One Response to “Skype Makes Interesting Strategic Move”

  1. TJ Stamm on March 21st, 2009 2:09 pm

    I am very excited that this codec was released. However, I am really wondering how long until hardware devices start taking advantage of this? Will we start seeing a flood of firmware updates with SILK support?

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