The researchers suggest Skype had 100 million downloads by mid-April 2005. Of these, 35 million users had registered, and there were 1.2 million SkypeOut accounts.
Skype does not publish subscriber numbers, but it does provide a rolling ticker showing how many minutes it has served. By monitoring this, Point Topic gauged a weekly and daily average of minutes served.
"Dividing by a 'rule of thumb' number of say 7 minutes per day then gives a feel for Skype usage. Doing this for 2 weeks in June 2005 yields an average of 5.6 or 5.3 million 'user-equivalents' for the 2 weeks."
This suggests that many people download the client and do not register, and many people who register never or rarely use Skype, a VoIP soft-client version of the 80:20 rule perhaps.
"But combined with our number for VoiceGlo we estimate that soft client services came to around 5.9 million VoIP users in Q1 2005," said Bosnell.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
