World’s first Skype video booth launches at Estonia’s Tallinn Airport

5 April 2011 | Launched by three Estonian software developers in 2003, Skype allows users to make voice calls over the Internet free of charge. At the end of 2010 the popular service had over 660 million registered users worldwide. To showcase Estonia’s (one of the three Baltic states) high-tech capabilities, the world’s first Skype ‘video telephony booth’ was recently unveiled at Tallinn Airport in Estonia, enabling travellers to make free worldwide video calls to other Skype users. 

The Skype video booth is a collaboration between Enterprise Estonia, which promotes Estonian companies abroad and Estonian ad agencies AdTech and Brilliant. Says Enterprise Estonia communications coordinator Merilin Pärli, “Skype was an idea that was developed in Estonia, and the company still has a development unit in Tallinn, so it was quite logical that the initial home of Skype would have a Skype station at Tallinn airport – as one Skype station says more than 1,000 words about Estonia.” 

The Skype video booth can be used by anybody who has a Skype account and those who have purchased Skype credit can also call regular telephone numbers. When a user steps on the floor of the station, the color of the futuristic-looking booth changes from blue to green signalling that he or she can log on. Inside the booth is a 22-inch touchscreen and a headset (alternatively, users can connect their own headseat as well), and after logging in, users can dial their friends and family. If the receiving end also has got a camera installed, then the service works just like an ordinary video call. To log off all one has to do is to step out of the booth. 

With the first Skype video booth now in place, AdTech, who designed the booth, says it wants to bring the service to other airports, hotels, cruise ships, hospitals and shopping malls around the world, extending Skype’s service beyond computers and mobile phones to dedicated physical devices. The cost of a video booth is reportedly around 4,000 euros (USD5,600) and AdTech is also working on several new prototypes. 

E-library Taipei Airport
The use of the Skype video booth to promote Estonoa’s technology sector follows the opening of the world’s first in-transit ‘e-library’ at Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport in March 2011. The e-library is a partnership between the government-funded Institute for Information Industry and the Taiwan-based Ever Rich duty free chain in an effort to showcase Taiwan’s high-tech capabilities. Travellers can consult 400 Chinese and English-language titles for free on iPads and other electronic devices in the e-library, which also offers free Wi-Fi, internet stations, as well as a real library, with books, magazines and newspapers. 

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