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VoIP High - SKYPE over Satellite
08:47 a.m. EST Dec 13, 2004
SKYPE is blowing up. When we ran our first story Nov 1 about the new free VoIP software, SKYPE had an amazing 20 million downloads. Today - only 1 month later - they are showing 40 million!
SKYPE & RBGAN
We started using SKYPE shortly after the launch back in 2003. Soon after, we began to toy with the idea of pairing SKYPE with another sensation of 2003; the RBGAN satellite modem.
The cheap and fast RBGAN was number one on a Himalayan expedition tech toy wish list last year. A data modem only unit, it lacked the possibility for voice calls - it's only drawback.
Setting up a VoIP network
It sounds very difficult but is actually very simple. Back in February 2004 we connected a RBGAN to a Laptop running the free SKYPE software. After establishing the internet connection our test person in Europe put on the headset and SKYPED to the Explorersweb office in New York. It worked! And the quality was amazing. Actually we had to ask several times – are you REALLY using SKYPE?
Crystal Voice Live VoIP
We then tried Europe to Asia which worked equally well. This August at Humaninet.org, Jeff Oltmann and Gregg Swanson wrote about a similar test using Crystal Voice Live VoIP software and RBGAN from Africa to US, “..The voice quality was good to excellent, better than comparable calls using a landline or cell phone to call between the locations. One of our field testers was 'very impressed' and felt that the quality was 'very acceptable'.”
Is it cheap?
It’s not expensive, but it isn’t really cheaper than using a handheld satellite phone. For standard satellite phone calls you would pay for the minute (roughly $1-2/min), but cost for the RBGAN is per Megabyte of transferred information so it gets a little tricky to measure the exact cost.
Jeff and Gregg above measured an average cost of $1.52/minute and we estimated around $2/minute. Our measurements were not solid and this needs to be checked further.
The cost problem is partly due to that the quality is almost too good. If the voice quality could be controlled - the cost could be lowered.
Heads up from the accountant
SKYPE is a very elegant solution based on P2P (Peer to Peer) networking, and the use of your computer as a hub (super-nodes) to accelerate the speed of SKYPE communication. This means that SKYPE would use a part of your bandwidth for its own purposes, which may lead to inflated cost when using the RBGAN.
If you are using SKYPE on the RBGAN – keep an eye at your cost and close down SKYPE when not in use.
A CIA nightmare
Conversation over SKYPE and RBGAN is at present considered impossible to eavesdrop. Thus it is a very cheap way to get a high-level security for military and business purposes, but the same is unfortunately also true for terrorists and criminals. SKYPE uses AES 256-bit encryption which is impossible to crack with present computer technology. The encryption keys are unique for each transfer and not stored by SKYPE. But beware if you are using SKYPE to call a normal landline or a cell phone – that phone can of course be tapped by others.
Oh so cool expedition tech
Set up a RBGAN with a WiFi connection. Give all your climbers an iPAQ with SKYPE and headsets. Now, everybody will have a permanent internet connection for e-mail and web uploads (using CONTACT 3.0 of course) and can cuddle up in their sleeping bags chatting away with friends back home. Cool or what?!
”VoIP High” is the third and final part in our series on how voice over internet can be utilized by expeditions already today. If you have been using VoIP or other interesting technologies on travel or expeditions pls let us know at team@humanedgetech.com.
Image Everest Lhotse Wall courtesy of Scott Woolums/Exploreyourplanet.com, one of the first climbers to use RBGAN in the Himalayas.
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