Red
Herring, 3 June 2006

Klaus Czerwinski, a spokesperson for T-Mobile International, struggled
to understand what a RedHerring.com reporter wanted to know.
“I can hardly hear you because the connection is so
bad,” he said. “I hear it is about Skype but no
more.”

The
question was not only about Skype, but the call was
placed through Skype, the VoIP service now owned by
eBay that helped pioneer the field of cheap, online telephony. To
Skype’s defense, we could hear Mr. Czerwinski just
fine—although, like many VoIP users, we’ve
sometimes experienced fuzzy connections on other calls.