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Skype Offering SkypeOut Service for Free
Skudd writes "In an effort to boost new customer acquisition, Skype has begun offering its 'SkypeOut' service for free. The free service is slated to last until December 31, 2006." From the article: "While the SkypeOut service will allow free calling to regular phones, the company will continue to charge people to get calls using a service it calls SkypeIn, which costs about $38 for an unlimited 12-month subscription. Consumers can get the service for three months for about $12.80."
Just tried it, works great!
Rogers Customers should drop the Rogers HomePhone service. This is FREE!!!
Apparantly it doesn't work for people with IPs starting with 7...
Note to submitters/editors: Not everyone lives in US/Canada.
Run!
It's an eleborate plan to get you 'signed up'.
I'm looking forward to calling my current land line provider, AT&T, and tell them I'm switching because of their choice to hand over phone records to the NSA. I'm sure VoIP won't be much more secure, but I hope if enough people do this they get the message.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
I read somewhere that you need to pay an activation fee of $10 USD. Is this true?
One of Skype's biggest perks is cheap international calling. Submitter sucks, should have put that in the summary. It's in the fucking article's title, fps.
I hate grammar Nazi's.
Did Skype suddenly form a new partnership with someone to handle these calls?
Or is this some sort of grab for customers so that they can have more P2P nodes?
Just some initial thoughts.
Skype is the AOL of VOIP and they are desperate to get everyone into their camp before people realise that they can have the world if they stay outside of that camp. True VOIP offers you the same freedom that the real internet offers those that are/were not AOL subscribers. I have a dial in line for free on VOIP and I can dial out for free already. I can call many countries for free. I do not need a restricted cobbled service just because it has a good marketing department.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
It's only guaranteed until the end of 2006. So most likely it's one those things to get people hooked on using the service and more willing to pay the charges after this year. But hey, the business model works for drug dealers. Once you get addicted to the sample drug, you'll be a long-term customer.
Conspiracy theory: The reason is free is because it's funded by the NSA, that way they won't need to ask anyone for phone records. Shhhhhhhhhhh
Just tried calling my cell phone on it from my old Powerbook G4 Ti @ 500 Mhz with OS X Tiger. Works -excellently-. No activation or anything needed to my account. Downloaded latest version, ran it, and it worked right "out of the box".
"Everything worth innovating today will go to court tomorrow."
December 31, 2006. After that, They are unsure of what they are going to do. I remember a company called dialpad years ago that did something similar, except in reverse, they started out giving unlimited free calling to anyone. Then they cut it down to 10 minutes, 5 minutes, then 1 minute and then they were forced to shut down because no one would subscribe. I'm sure this isn't the case with Skype but given they're past record I'm not sure this is a good idea.
Restore the madness of youth's lechery
I already have a cellphone that has enough monthly minutes that, for as little as I use the phone, it might as well just be unlimited. And I can take it with me anywhere, too.
Nonetheless, it's kind of neat making these free phone calls with Skype and hearing the people's voices come out of my computer speakers.
Have to see if I can get through to Dial-a-Song at 718-387-6962. Now it's free if I call from home as well as work...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
we can safely assume that all our Skype calls are screened by good ol' NSA.
Almost everyone who has a cell phone has free domestic long distance. This sounds like an amazing offer, but it's giving people nothing they didn't have before. It might get a few more people to actually try Skype, but the practical uses of this offer are almost nonexistent.
Some pretty cheap headsets.
I think this is wonderful that Skype is offering this. Although I read in several forums that people with IP's in the range of 70.x.x.x to 79.x.x.x. Not sure if that's true, but I have an IP in the range with Verizon DSL and am prompted with needing to buy skype credit to make a call.
I'm guessing it's due to ISP's that are using packet shaping for VOIP, etc. Anyone else had problems with this, whether with Verizon or other ISPs?
As of the time of this posting, the free SkypeOut doesn't work for IPs starting with any number between 70 and 79!
Right, like having nerds spew biased arrogant wrong headed shit on Slashdot is worth notoriety
Oh the prank calls that can be made with this ..all the calls come in as 1000023456
Skype is getting beat up by posters, you have to scroll down to feel the heat: http://share.skype.com/sites/en/2006/05/free_calls _to_all_landlines_an.html
Seems that it does not function in the 70~80.xxx.xxx.xxx range. My ISP Qwest is in that range. In other words they missed a few of us. I use Asterisk and Telasip and don't really care. Bad marketing.
Quite a few people are unable to get it to work. It seems that they attempt to limit it to US and Canadian customers based on IP, but their filter has problems. I'm unable to use the service on my internet connection (Comcast), but using my neighbors wireless network it works great. They're on a different ISP, not sure which one. I submitted a support ticket and got this (somewhat entertaining) response: "Thank you for writing to us. I appreciate the opportunity to assist you with your questions today about the error you are receiving when you are attempting to call a US number. I am sorry to hear that you encountered this situation. It does appear that this is an apparent issue. Our Engineers are working on to resolve this. I really appreciate your information on this and your patience. Your IP address will be further looked into. In the meantime and would like to apologize for any concern or inconvenience this is causing you. You may want to continue using another computer to use your SkypeOut at the moment."
I wonder if it's improved enough to be worth trying again.
-c
"If you are an idealist it doesn't matter what you do or what goes on around you, because it isn't real anyway."-R.P.W.
I'm using the linux version of Skype (1.2.0.18), and it tells me that I need SkypeOut to make outgoing calls. I have tried several times, and have even tried creating a new account. Same deal. Any ideas?
Doesn't every phone have to be able to dial 911 anyway?
I was under the impression that they couldn't cut that off, by law; similarly, you can turn on any cell phone and even if it isn't registered with the network, you can use it to dial 911. That was at least my understanding of how things worked, I admit I've never tried either.
The house I live in currently has phone wiring, but it's a real mess and I've never used it. Some day I'll have to unscrew one of the jacks (they're all of the old 4-pin variety, and painted over anyway) and see if there's dial tone. We certainly aren't paying for anything, we use cellphones and VoIP via cable internet.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm in the 71.*.*.* IP range, and judging by the other comments I'm seeing, this is the problem.
I've been using SkypeOut for quite some time now. I first purchased SkypeOut credit in Oct. 2004. My main motivation has been that my brother lives in Beijing and I live in Toronto. But I also talk with other family and friends quite regularly using the feature. One thing I've noticed: my connection and audio quality tend to be better to when I'm talking to my Brother in Beijing than when I'm talking to my wife while I'm travelling in the US. Skype has gradually become more and more important in my suite of communication tools. I'd much rather Skype someone than email them. I used to use Yahoo! messenger and ICQ quite a bit. I've completely stopped. Maybe they've improved, but Skype's conference call/chat feature has been extremely helpful. I did an hour-long 3-way business call between Toronto, Baltimore and London in the UK for only a few dollars!
All that said, there's a problem too: I've been using it on my laptop and it means carrying around a headset with a microphone. The built-in mic is terrible. For anyone adopting Skype as a phone replacement (which it sill isn't for me), this is an important consideration. The big "discount" they are giving with free SkypeOut in North America will probably help adoption here a little, but I'm not convinced it will make a really big splash. I think they need to figure out a nice way to integrate with a cell-phone-like headset that still works through one's computer/laptop or on one's wireless LAN. This would be the item that would allow me to get rid of my home/office phones.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
I do a lot of work with Asterisk and have investigated pricing on inbound and outbound rates to such an extent that it would be considered obsessive.
With most VoIP, inbound call phone numbers are at least as expensive to get as outbound when you get to any kind of volume. I'm not talking about 1 line for a few bucks, or a few test lines at fixed cost, but the ability to just recieve a bunch of calls at once on a phone number. It comes down to about $18 (US) for the ability to recieve each concurrent inbound call. You can get unlimited at a penny or two per minute per call, but that ends up being more expensive if you do good pooling with a fixed number of lines. Outbound can be as little as half that.
Where is the cost in all this? The cost is the connection to the copper based system. At some point, somewhere, someone has to get paid for a link to that big addressing system.
The sick part is, most of the big telcos are doing voip any way, and their ability to hold onto that master address space is the key last item for them to hold the power to charge what they do. ENID (including free systems) are functional -- and can work just like DNS -- but the providers wont use it.
There's a system (ENID based, I believe) that would allow any number you dial from your regular phone or cell phone to be checked against a registry, and if a voip address is listed for it, the telco could bypass the entire infrastructure and route the call directly to the person you called over voip. So if I registered a voip address to my phone number (which I have done) and you called me from say, Verizon Wireless, they could route the call to me without going over a single bit of big telco as anything other than VoIP. No telco switching involved. It would bypass my per-minute inbound costs entirely other than my internet connection.
It works if you call from a voip phone that knows about the registry (Asterisk based systems, for example can do this). The telcos and cell companies don't do it. Why not? As a whole, they make their money by controlling that master address -- the phone number.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
As a poor student who moves to a new town every four months because of the program i'm in at uni (yay co-op), i GREATLY appreciate Skype making my calls free.
1) Because i move all the time, i don't maintain a landline;
1) All of my family and friends are out of town;
2) cell phones in Canada haven't been deregulated yet and Rogers, Bell, Telus, etc., charge through the nose and other unpleasant orifices.
Skype is making my life a HECK of a lot easier. I've tried it already... a lot... and it works wonderfully.
I remember Dialpad ... actually my introduction to them was from the floor of one of the computer shows, it might have been Macworld Boston or NYC; I remember calling some friends from their booth and asking about the audio quality.
... well, they would have been Skype.
Unfortunately by the time I got around to getting broadband, they had already stopped the unlimited free service, and it was all downhill from there.
I hope whenever people get around to writing the history of VoIP that there's more than a footnote there about Dialpad, because boy were those guys just a few years ahead of their time. I think broadband penetration was just a little too light, and wireless internet hadn't hit it big enough for people to think of computers as something around their house that could be as ubiquitous as telephones ("why would I want to go into the computer room to make a phone call?"); if they had held out for a year or two longer
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Also this is a good way to compete with Yahoo! Messenger, which was recently upgraded to use the same voice codec as skype.
I call my parents in Europe quite often and always keep an eye out for a good deal on international calling. I have been looking at SkypeOut rates ever since it was introduced, it is still 2x more expensive than a good phone card.
Seriously, who'd get "addicted" to poor quality phone calls that need to be made through your PC (or Mac)? For a bit more a month you can get real VoIP service with an ATA which will work with all your existing phones. The quality is indistinguishable from POTS. You get unlimited calls within North America and also some other countries. I mean, unless you REALLY can't afford an extra $15 a month or whatever, come on. Might as well try to convince a heroin addict to switch to asprin because it is cheaper (to stay with the addiction theme).
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
Just to note, there are a few security concerns about Skype, its ownership by eBay, and potential security holes within the Skype network. Be aware of what you're using when you're using it.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
You know, it's great that I find out when I spend money on Skype, doesn't benefit me, but rather, a nation far away that already has a lot of their telecommunications provided for free.
Yeah, maybe I shouldn't be so selfish, but then again, when a good paying wage for a fulltime job is 200USD, here. Not even enough to pay for a small apartment a month, in this country, I'm thinking more in terms of self preservation.
If connection costs to other telecommunication systems were really the issue, then they would allow people to call US numbers from Europe (and other places) for free.
A thought occured to me, I some how doubt AOL users will have problems placing calls to the US for free, since the IP ranges used in AOL ISPs are shared internationally.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
http://www.voipbuster.com/ ...
;-)
;-)
http://www.sipdiscount.com/
http://www.voipcheap.com/
voipdiscount.com
voipstunt.com
gives... well... around 40 countries free! (well... you pay 10euros for 2 or 3 months and you can call a lot of countries for 0 cent/min or 1 cent/min)
I use it a lot (with sjphone) and for this price... this is unbeatable! But for a good VOIP, you need a good High Speed Internet Access! A delay of 1 or 2 seconds and cause a hang up before you can even try to say "hello"
sip compatible with any hardware SIP or softphone like sjPhone (mac, pc, linux, pda...)
sip server: sip.voipbuster.com (port 5060)
domain: voipbuster.com
stun server: stun.voipbuster.com
sip server: sip1.sipdiscount.com (port 5060)
domain: sipdiscount.com
stun server: stun.sipdiscount.com
etc
That's why your post is at 0, man.
Given the way techology and politics have been going lately, perhaps we should all be thankful for the fact that all the big telcos are doing is ignoring ENID and hoping it will go away.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were to campaign to make it illegal if it ever starts to make significant inroads on their cartel--excuse me, business model.
Let's see, what excuse would they use for outlawing it? Child pornography is always a guaranteed sell, but hard to work in this case. Maybe they could roll it into the next anti-terrorism bill: bypassing the POTS switching system might make the calls harder to intercept, therefore it'll only be used by terrorists, drug dealers, and MySpace users.
I'm only half-joking here. The POTS "namespace" is going to be the big telco's Alamo: it's a gigantic source of revenue and not one they're going to let go without a fight. They'll probably lose in the long run, but it'll be long and unpleasant in the meantime.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm paying for a land line at home only to send/receives faxes. Being able to use Skype with a fax would be a significant drop in costs for me.
I am on a shared cell phone plan and was looking for a way to make cheap calls online. Can't beat free. Tried the free SkypeOut and it works great. I plan on using the flavor out of this until year end.
I have heard that making calls through ones computer, one has to put up with reduced clarity and unnecessary noise. I am curious how good skype is w.r.t making calls using a normal phone. Does it suffer from low clarity and noise interference ?
Linux Help
for all things on Linux
I've been using Skype for a couple of months with a mic/headset combo and it has been surprisingly good. One of the benefits of Skype is that you can make conference calls. This is something I've never done at home with a landline. I had $9 Skype-Out left and don't know how I'm gonna use it up now(-:
doesnt work with UK land lines..........
would of been nice to mention that, retards
I just installed it and completed an hour long phone call to a landline. I used the cheap out-of-the-box microphone that came with my Dell, and my computer speakers (not headphones), just like a speakerphone.
Worked beautifully. Neither I nor my friend had any problem hearing, and it didn't sound like a speaker phone all -- none of those typical speakerphone "click on/click off" noises at all. We could even both tallk at the same time, with both of us more-or-less audible. It was just about as if my friend was in the same room as me. (Some of the credit is probably due to my soundcard.)
I did have a major CPU utilization problem with Skype until I uninstalled McAfee's firewall, which made the audio terrible. McAfee had long been disabled in favor of (the free, better, not reliant on IE and Active-X) Kerio, but I hadn't gotten around to removing it entirely. Once removed, no problem with Skype at all.
Also, as I have Windows XP SP2, it was necessary to install this TCPIP.sys patch to get around Microsoft's "helpfulness".
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I was able to test the free SkypeOut by calling my home phone from my PowerBook, but not without some difficulty. At first it wouldn't dial the number at all -- apparently you need to use a bit of a special incantation to get it to dial.
On my first attempt, I tried to do a ten digit dial (xxx-xxx-xxxx), but it wouldn't let me dial out. So I next tried adding a 1 in front of the number (1-xxx-xxx-xxxx), but again, no-go.
The trick? You must put a plus sign ('+') in front of the 1 (that is, dial "+1-xxx-xxx-xxxx"). Then it works just fine. But otherwise, it doesn't work at all -- the call button will be completely disabled.
I wonder however if this won't be ripe for abuse. All Skype calls show up as being from 000-012-3456, and I just know there are some asshats out there who are going to start using this for obscene phone calls, or other negative abuses of the system.
Anyhow, if you can't get your version of Skype to work, try it with the + symbol in front of the 1. On the latest Mac version at least, this is the only way it will work correctly.
Yaz.
So what happens with the money that's already on my SkypeOut account? My current balance is only valid until Sept. 29, which is well before the Dec. 31 end of this offer.
From their Terms Of Service page: "A credit balance for Skype Credit expires 180 days after the last chargeable use of the Skype Credit. Credit balances that are not used within the said 180 day period will be lost."(emphasis mine) I assume that means that free calls don't count as "chargable use" so even if I place SkypeOut calls every day for the next few months my money would still disappear at the end of September?
If that's the case, looks like I'll be submitting a refund request. Don't misunderstand me - I'm definitely not complaining about free service, but if I end up losing all my current balance then it's not free.
Now that I think about it, I wonder how many people will be burned by this and all these 'unused' balances will go straight into Skype's coffers.
Duct tape is like the Force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.
Skype can have better or worse voice quality depending on a number of factors, usually the quality of the internet connection on both ends. When everything is working well, which is very often for me, the sound quality can be ALOT better than POTS.
You might want to just try it to see if it works well for you.
One bit of bad news for you, looking at your web page, is that the linux skype client is an old version that doesnt include video. For many people, myself included, the linux client doesnt work as well as the windows client.
That system is not called ENID , but ENUM.
"In short, a server with ENUM support will lookup a dialled telephone number in DNS to see if there's alternate ways to set up the call instead of just calling out on the PSTN telephone line. ENUM may contain a reference to a SIP URL, a telephone number to dial, a web page or an e-mail address. "
They did this a few years ago. I can remember using their service to call someone in the US and it worked good even then. On Dial-up no less. Its nice that this is "big news" now that everyone is on the bandwagon. I love the whole "free pc to pc calls" marketing crap. Yeah thanks, Instant messengers have been doing that for years, you're not doing anything ground breaking.
Great! I've wanted to use SkypeOut for quite a while. However, I just couldn't get their website to take my credit card. (Or maybe my CC company was auto rejecting the request...) Anyway, it wasn't worth the effort to figure out what was wrong just to save the extra $.01/min (vs. a calling card) on North American long distance (which I was most interested in)...
... you really just wasted your time by logging out.
for a minute there, i lost myself...
One step further would be to extend (free) wireless LAN coverage and put WLAN adapters and VoIP software into cell phones - voila: free cell phone airtime! Then we could also call from anywhere. (Calling people would still be expensive in non-WLAN areas though and obviously impossible in places that don't offer cell phone coverage either.)
There are a few problems I see though.. 1. Skype is the one VoIP company with all the bells and whistles and might very well bury the other services, in this world the power of marketing is tremendous; 2. the other VoIP providers will want to make some more money as well eventually - I can't see how they would run they free services forever; 3. same goes for the open WLAN access points: some access points, e.g. in hotels require you to register and pay a fee for use; if the (Municipality) government doesn't subsidize it many with no direct gain from it will close their access points for public use.
And when you gaze long enough into the code, the code will also gaze into you.
I have Skype but I can't seem to figure out how to use SkypeOut for free. What do I need to do to activate this feature?
Btw, I'm not in the U.S. right now. Could this be the reason? Perhaps Skype is auto-detecting me as not being in the states so it's not letting me have it for free?
eTrade SUCKS
I use Gizmo. They may not use an opensource client, but they do use OPEN PROTOCOLS (skype...) Their linux support has alsa been much better for me. Oh, look at that freudian slip! Yes, ALSA actually works without glaring issues. I'm even using it with an external usb microphone! They may not be offering free callout, but for 10$ you get 1000minutes that will not expire for two years. Those same minutes can be used anywhere in the world for the standard rates.
Now, sorry that sounds like an advertisement, but a slashdot article on skype a little while back had me interested in this area, though I knew as soon as I saw skype that it wasn't for me. There is another provider that uses an open client as well, and had the same rates as Gizmo, but I cannot remember them from the top of my head.
Gizmo Project Anyone have links for other "open" providers. I really think they would compliment this article quite well.
Right now here in Qatar, the local ISP / Telco monopoly, QTel, is playing cames with Vonage and other hardware & software based VoIP systems.
However, Skype seems able to get around their blocks. (They've blocked partial access to the Skype website, but they can't seem to block the service.
As a result, I use Skype more and more to call home and my daughter. it's more reliable than Vonage seems to be.
"On the Internet, no one knows you're a minifig....."
Having said that, a friend of mine let his line rental lapse some months ago, and his ADSL connection hasn't been unplugged yet, so maybe it's worth a go... ;-)
That is odd. My ip starts with 71, for the first octet and I have the same problem. I thought maybe Linux only had the problem, then I tested it. So I guess I'll have to war drive to get a "good" Skype ip? THIS SUCKS!!!
Seems this is only for the US and Canada. Maybe Slashdot needs to orient it's writing more to its global audience? (:
On a side note, VOIP (Skype) and Ryanair (low cost airline in Europe) is the very reason me (in Norway) and my girl (in Portugal) manages to keep together even tho the distance is enormous. Being able to go to Portgal for the price of an expensive bus ticket + almost free comunications = truly united Europe.
Forgive me limited memory at the hour I wrote the post.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I couldn't get free calls either (all the ip's I get from Verizon start w/ 7), but when I downloaded the beta it worked just fine.
Weren't these the morons that limited their binary to allow the conferencing features to work on Intel platforms even though the AMD platforms could handle the load just fine? I wonder if my AMD X2 proc will be able to handle these calls! *sniff*
SkyPE has a slight P2P ability in it. Those of you with a good processor/machine the SKYPE client will go into "Supernode" mode. This allows people to route thier calls through your bandwidth.
This is one of the reasons I don't leave skype running all the time.
BigZoo folded, but OneSuite.com is still doing well.
And you think it is less secure than your home phone?
I can tap your home phone remotely with 10 dollars of equpment from Radio Shack.
Even if the data is totally unencrypted, it is orders of magnitude harder to tap someone's internet connection than their phone connection. Anyone can splice in a twisted pair to recieve all your incoming calls and attach a small RF transmitter with a few miles range, and odds are great that you would never even notice it, or the jack box on the side of your house. It is much much more difficult to tap DSL or cable, decode the call, can transmit that. You'd need a large amount of kit by the house, something that would get noticed easily.
At least with Internet phones the number of people who can reasonably tap in is a bit more restricted (people working at any of th einfrastructure point sbetween your house and theirs). With the PTSSN it's basicall a free for all - anyone can tap in at any point in the line from the wall of your house to the pole - and all they need is a $2.99 handset.
Try Unlimitel.ca - they provide numbers in some Canadian cities for C2.50/month plus 1.1 cents / minute. Quality is amazing. Service is excellent. No, I don't work for them. Just trying to help.
(rant) ;)
;)
I have very bad experiences with SkypeOut. People tell me all the time they don't understand me etc. If the service has the same quality in the US giving it for free is still too expensive
I also don't like the digital jitter of a normal Skype connection. It seems I'm used to analog hissing too much
BTW: I'm on a 2mbit up/down leased line... so this should be not the problem. And I think I never got a mail back from CS.
(/rant)
So how is Skype paying the bill for all this? Don't they have to pay a flat fee to the phone companies per call at least to route the call to the local number? You would think they'd put even a really high limit on this.
I just visited sipdiscount.com.
Alas, no joy. Clicking on the register link leads to a windows download. There appears to be no way to even register without downloading some crappy windows program. As I run GNU/Linux and Mac OS X, this makes this a complete nonstarter.
If they adhered to standards at all, and let you sign up through an HTML interface and configure your SIP gateway/router yourself (as you've described above) it would be interesting. However, since I can't even sign up for the service without buying and polluting my machine with Microsoft Spyware(tm)/Microsoft Virus Fractory(tm), the service is regrettably less than useless.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Most of the rest of us have to pay a high monthly fee, or alternatively, do what I do - use prepaid, so I pay $100 a year for my cellphone (still a lot more than free, but it's the best I can get), which gives me over 1000 minutes. 100 minutes a month is more than I need, because I use Skype for my longer "chat" calls to people in the US and abroad.
So, for those of us who can't get free cellphones, Skype already helped make telephony very cheap, and has now made it even cheaper.
On the downside, I use T-Mobile for my prepaid, because it's one of the better prepaid deals, but while its coverage is great where I spend 99% of my time, I usually lose it when I go on a trip. On the upside, when I go to the rest of the world, I just plug in a GSM SIM card and have a local cellphone for very little money.
My search for "funny)" came up with no hits. All these comments are worthless :).
Great move on Skype's part in trying to increase market share... Wait... Don't they already own that market?
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Oops, interesting typo I made. They go there to feed the bears. I suppose if more people went there to feel them, they'd indirectly feed them at least.
People like lower cost. As more and more people get VoIP numbers/use IM systems the necessity of going to the legacy POTS network declines. Once this reaches a critical mass (probably about 50% of the population), the telcos will suddenly be all about openness, because their legacy numbering system will begin to decline rapidly in value.
This is one reason all of the telcos are now about moving into broadband service. They aren't stupid, they see this coming. They are just milking the revenue cow while they can.
With their game, Duke Nukem Forever
I have to admit I'm surprised by all the negative comments by people who have had bad experiences. I've been using Skype for quite a while now and honestly I thought just about everybody who had a PC and had to talk internationally used it. I usually summarize it (to friends who don't use it yet) as having better-than-phone quality when calling computer to computer, it's completely free, and anybody can set it up and use it--even it's your dad and he's behind a firewall you made him buy. For some time my wife and I were 6 timezones apart but we'd call every weekend morning and just leave the line open for 2-3 hours while I made and ate breakfast and did misc. things around the house; we'd say something every now and again but being able to have an open connection like that made the distance bearable.
Every once in a while I'll get a bad connection (either computer to computer or using SkypeOut) but 99% of the time it's great; even with the bad connection a 2nd call almost always clears the problem. Even the video calling just plain works and works well (my son's grandparents love it because we currently live 12 timezones away from them and they miss seeing him!).
> What a fucktard. And you got +5 insightful. Skype is a Scandinavian company, but I guess that won't stop people like you from their american bashing.
Skype was based in Luxembourg (NOT SCANDINAVIA) and is now OWNED by EBAY an AMERICAN company. Get your f**ktard straight, that's why you get -15 insightful.
All of my systems are AMD or VIA based. It would seem you, and your partner Intel, don't believe these x86 processors can support your application's features well. Thusly, I shall take your word for it and avoid using your products on any of my machines.
Thank You, and have a pleasant partnership.
Don't bollocks normally come in a bag?
Respect copyright - the GPL relies on it.
By US law any cell phone can dial 911 - even if it's not paid up. But a disconnected land line is ... disconnected.
There are groups that distribute old cell phones to people who may need to make emergency calls but can't afford to pay for the capability.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
10 years ago this would have been something. Now, Meh.
Last night I saw this and tried out Skype for the first time. I called my wife and said "Isn't this cool, free phone calls from my computer to any landline!". Her response? "We already have unlimited local and long distance with our landline, why would we use that?". I think we also have Free calling to anyone with a Verizon cell phone.
So I guess this is a cool way to maybe not have your kid tie up your phone but beyond that it doesn't seem very useful. Personally I think the whole thing is technically cool but again not so useful for most.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Exactly. I did that too. Also try BroadVoice.com. 35 countries, no per minute charge.
However, OneSuite is indispensable. Often the voice quality is much better than VOIP calls.
Trying to be helpful -- You should look at my post below: BroadVoice.com.
I wonder how easy would it be to route non-US IPs to get around Skype's IP filtering.
...to those of us who are stuck using dial-up :)
remember to loot and pillage before you burn!
'nuff said
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.