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."
Note to submitters/editors: Not everyone lives in US/Canada.
Check this site out for other gripes concerning rogers.
Telecom service companies need to go down. Communication companies should be charging what the service is WORTH.
http://www.ihaterogers.ca/
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.
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
no. I didn't have to.
I tested it by creating a new UID. The first two times I tried calling a friend's mobile phone, I got error messages. The third time and every time after was smooth sailing. The sound isn't the best, not cell phone quality, but it works. The number showed up as "000123456" on the recipient's phone, so its usefulness is limited; those who screen calls would likely not pick up, and since you can't get incoming on it without upgrading - well.
If you have an outgoing number, I'm sure you can solve this issue by being issued an incoming number. IMO, it seems to be a loss leader of sorts, to get folks to upgrade to paid service.
un burrito me trampeó.
For my UK incoming number I use www.sipgate.com
For my US incoming number I use www.sipphone.com
For outgoing calls I use www.voipbuster.com (they also offer an incoming number but I already had one)
www.voipcheap.com or www.voipcheap.co.uk (same stuff really).
I have a Sipura ATA so I do not even need to have my computer turned on to make or recieve calls. You can get other ATAs and I do not think the Sipura is the best but I bought it 3 years ago when it was.
BTW I live in northern Thailand and with this I can call and chat to my friends as much as I like.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
By U.S. law, even a disconnected phone line is able to dial 911.
"Joy is contagious," he said, peering into the microscope.
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
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
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(-:
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.