Fring accuses Skype of being anti-competitive

Fring on Monday accused Skype of anti-competitive behavior after it blocked the use of Fring for Skype chats. The freeze came after Fring said it had to temporarily stop Skype to accommodate the load from iPhone 4 video chats. The app developer accused Skype's team of being "cowards" by not letting the service come back to Fring and of trying to "muzzle competition" by forcing users to run Skype's official app.

Company co-founder Avi Shechter was careful not to completely sever ties and said he would be "happy to reconnect" with Skype should it change its policy back, but he didn't give a sense of any progress in getting the service back.

A Skype spokesman argued that it wasn't certain if Fring was following the licesnging terms of use through its implementation of Skype. The Internet calling pioneer also tried to blame Fring for shutting off access. No explanation was given for why Skype had no issues with Fring's implementation for the previous four years it had been active.

Fring has characterized itself as a unifying communications service and, in addition to Skype, has had multiple IM networks and Twitter as part of its more recent feature set. Two-way video chat has only lately been a mainstream feature with the addition of Android and iPhone support.

By Electronista Staff

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iPhone, industry, Android, Skype, iPhone apps, mobile phones, Apple, Fring