IT EXPO: Skype - To adapt, VoIP must go Mobile, offer rich experience

"In the future it's going to be all about video, video on your mobile, video anywhere," Christopher Dean, Chief Strategy Officer at Skype, claimed in his Thursday morning keynote at this week's IT EXPO show in Miami, Fla.

He began his speech with his vision for the future of Skype and VoIP. A lot of his keynote focused on the future of VoIP on Mobile with the 4G network being the catalyst for a rich mobile communication future.

He started off describing three points that are shaping Skype's future planning and what he believes should effect all operators planning. Namely, that there is an ongoing sea change in the telecommunications market that is accelerating, a growing focus on importance of mobility--and a key element of what Skype wants to do--and changes to the market and the need to adapt.

"Changes in the market offer both immense risk for operators who don't actually adapt to change. Incredible amount of opportunity for those that do," said Dean.

Dean brought out an interesting fact that mobile data usage has exploded--a 5000 percent increase on AT&T's network since the launch of the iPhone. The mobile Internet through the iPhone and iPodTouch was adopted something like 8 times faster than the more traditional desktop internet usage when it first became available to consumers. The chart he showed to acompany this statistic was a staggering line graph with slow and steady lines for the original Internet service usage and a sky rocketing near-vertical line originating from the iPhone's launch.

3G wireless service in certain cities is a super congested network with the congestion limiting rich communication applications. 4G will be an inflection point for the communication world. "4G will bring the full creative power of the internet to the mobile internet," he said.

What Dean means by rich communication applications and creative power of the Internet is video. Skype video usage is up 5x from 2007 to 2008 and it was even more in 2009. "34 percent of all of our calls are video," he said, ending his speech with a call for the VoIP community to prepare for the mobile 4G future and offer rich user experiences. 

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