Viber takes on Skype with free HD VoIP calls

When VoIP-telephony lived mostly on desktops, it is difficult to imagine that someone could become a serious competitor for Skype. Even Google failed to solve this task. But now when the VoIP market is rapidly expanding to mobile devices, Skype can't feel so confident any more. Unlike the world of computers (where it was possible to develop single Windows-client), the world of mobile platforms is much more complicated. First, there are many of them, and second - it needs to develop the other VoIP technology. Therefore, the old rivals and even new startups are trying to take on Skype in the mobile VoIP sphere. Viber - is one of the newcomers. This service launched at the end of last year and has already attracted several millions of users. So by means of what Viber is going to beat Skype?

The answer is very simple - call quality. Though Skype is considered one of the most high-quality IP-telephony services, it's far from ideal yet. And Viber wants to make the call quality its main competitive advantage. For this, they partnered with russian company SPIRIT, that develops VoIP / video platforms for Enterprise and carriers. In particular SPIRIT pays special attention to Voice over 3G/4G technologies. It is interesting that in the time of Friis/Zennstrom SPIRIT was one of the Skype's technology partners.

For now Viber only works only on iPhone. It allows to make free calls over Wi-Fi and 3G to your contacts who have Viber installed. Unlike Skype, Viber identified users by phone number. It's enough to send a message to your contact and then you can call him for free from the iPhone contacts list. In the near future Viber developers plan to release versions for Blackberry and Android, as well as free SMS tool.

See also: Top 10 VoIP services