The roots of Skype

Skype will stay

Human Communication and Skype

It was the year 1970 when I worked as a senior engineer official at the Ministry of Communications of the Estonian SSR. My field was designing infrastructure and conducting project expertise. At the same time, I was studying radio engineering (specializing in LR) in the evening faculty of TPI (Tallinn Polytechnic Institute). At the university, the concept of BRAINSTORMING was introduced. We would set a futuristic, seemingly unsolvable goal based on the current level of science and technology and start offering possible solutions in that direction.

This is how I defined the goal of communication and wrote it down:
Every person, regardless of location, must be able to communicate with any other person at any moment.

Today, we are quite close to that.

In 1970, I discussed this with Minister of Communications Bruno Saul and read this definition aloud to him: “We could have such a goal!”
He was a forward-thinking person, also a radio engineer, and he said: “Pretty good!”

By the end of the Estonian SSR, there were nearly 400,000 landline phones in Estonia. A detailed article on the state of communications appeared in the newspaper Rahva Hääl, authored by Jüri Rebane, head of the Transport and Communications Department of the State Planning Committee.

But the Estonian SSR’s communications network had one important peculiarity compared to the Soviet Union's.
From here, in the early 1990s, it was possible to dial directly to the Western world, and in this, our Kaera 22 team, Tallinn Long-Distance Exchange (TKJ), and the Ministry of Communications played a major role. We utilized the direct radio link to Helsinki that had been set up during the 1980 Olympics. In order for the Helsinki (HLK) and Tallinn (TLN) communication stations to connect, they had to be technically adapted, and around 1,000 microprocessor-based add-on devices had to be rapidly manufactured.

I organized the manufacturing under the cooperative label VIKO, and TKJ handled the installation at the station. Minister and schoolmate Toomas Sõmera called and pleaded, “Please understand, this is really necessary.” The activity was enthusiastic and patriotic. The ruble collapsed in value, but Estonia gained freedom in the field of communications!

The E(ns)V economy got going thanks to communication.
Through VIKO, satellite TV activities provided a second channel of information from the Western world across Estonia. We produced antennas and receivers (250 units). A batch of 500 was left incomplete due to the dismantling of the RET factory.

Satellite TV brought me into contact with Rein Luik, an Estonian-American top engineer and PhD in technical sciences. We worked together under the Cybernetics Institute's cooperative Intex, with the help of academics Ülo Jaaksoo and Enn Tõugu. We began producing satellite communication antennas in Estonia (up to 32m in diameter) and started a project to establish an international satellite teleport near Tallinn. The project, land allocation, and financing were all in place... but...

.. But then things got strange. We couldn’t get a license to use radio frequencies, and the matter dragged on bizarrely—counterarguments were absurd.
The truth emerged: a concession agreement was being prepared with the former telecom monopolies of Sweden and Finland. At home, those two countries were facing competition from new operators.
After the agreement, Estonia’s international communication could only go through the Swedish and Finnish telecom monopoly networks—for 25 years.

With Rein Luik’s support, I opposed this monopoly. The telecom market in the US was open, the same in the UK, Sweden, and Finland.
Due to opposition, my team was thrown out, and the teleport project was shelved for 25 years. An international teleport is a satellite communications hub for connections between various countries.
Long-distance calls to the US, which could have cost 5 EEK/min, ended up costing 25 EEK/min.

Motorola offered a quick solution to the phone shortage—around 1 million radio phones working on a different principle at a reasonable price (for more information, read also stories of Rein Luik and the Beauty of Experimentation - note: currently in Estonian).

The emerging small-scale farming economy needed communication. But this project also wasn’t given a chance—the government made a negative decision on frequencies.

 

Mart Laar’s E(ns)V government acted under the baton of the Swedish-Finnish monopolies. The groundwork, however, had been laid by the prior Savisaar government of the Estonian SSR.
I continued with internet-related matters, and new technical solutions using free frequencies enabled further development.

The company Ezfone began producing IP phones that enabled long-distance calls via the internet at local call rates.

phone

I bought four of these phones, but a test call with a friend in Italy didn’t work. The connection was one-sided due to NAT (Network Address Translation). Communication only worked if both parties had the correct IP addresses. It didn’t work through NAT.

 

The youngest members of the Kaera 22 team — Jaan, Priit, and Ahti (JPA) —had been working daily since 1986, Ahti joining slightly later. These 14-year-old boys learned top-level programming hands-on in the Kaera22 environment (read our article: Study Program).

Kaera 22 team

The 3 of them wrote games on the ENTEL computer (a Kaera22 creation) and were also on VIKO’s payroll.
We reached the IBM PC level and, in cooperation with Rein Luik, established contacts with Sweden, where JPA sold their first game. While continuing their university studies, they began operating in the software market with varying success. They formed a company for this and other activities.

 

In the world of the internet, there was the platform Napster, through which young people around the world shared music, copyright be damned. But it was shut down at the request of the global authors’ association; the server was closed.

JPA then wrote the p2p file-sharing program KaZaA.
In the process, they solved a crucial issue—they got through NAT!

 

From there, the path to Skype was open.
Skype instantly became the world’s best communication tool, and at that moment, it was backdoor-free.
In addition to direct communication between computer users, it also allowed calls to regular phones at much lower rates than Telco prices.

We had come close to the ideal communication model of 1970.

 

Communication itself doesn’t directly produce anything tangible—but it gets life moving.

The role of Skype and JPA was best summed up by U.S. President Obama:

“The entrepreneurial spirit of the Estonian people has been unleashed, and your innovations - like Skype — are transforming our world.”

 

Skype stays!
Jüri Malsub

engineer
JPA tugiisik ja vaootsale aitaja

7.54
5.5.2025