Skype's Free Phone Call Plan Will Soon Have Annual Fee

The New York Times is reporting that Skype has said it would begin charging $30 a year for unlimited calls to landline and mobile phones within the United States and Canada. From the article: "As a promotion, Skype began allowing its users to place free domestic 'SkypeOut' calls from their computers to traditional and mobile phones last May. At the time, the company said the promotion would extend only through year's end. The company is offering a half-price subscription to those who sign up before Jan. 31. Calls from one computer to another have been and will continue to be free."

Comments

Classic Marketing

[_merlin]

This is straight from the textbook: give them a free taste of something for long enough to realise they like it, then introduce a "reasonable" fee. Most of them will feel like they can't live without it and accept the fee rather than go without.

At 8 Cents A Day...

[Chabil Ha']

You've got a deal. Free would be nice, but not bad considering I can call anywhere anytime for that much...

Google Rejected such Classic Marketing

[tulsaoc3guy]

Early on, it was a hallmark of Google to hold off on charging for their web services. When others were prominently charging and hawking, they resisted... the philosophy paid off for Google, looks like. The situation for voice calls, however, may be totally different.

Now will be a regulated phone company

[goombah99]

Once they start charging they come under a new set of laws that makes them a regulated telecom. when they were not charging it was arguable they were not under the regulation jurisdiction of the US justice dept or FCC. Thus by giving it away for free they built up a lot of anti-establishement street cred. That's a nice bit of viral marketing buzz.

Now they will have to include backdoors for phone line tapping under US laws if they operate inside the USA. Sure they may be based outside the US and have global customers. Think that makes a whoot of difference to the Justice department? Might as well say the same for cocaine dealers: they may operate in the US but their corporate headquarters is in Medelin Columbia.

Any how, welcome to the Machine, skype.

Re:Now will be a regulated phone company

[Anonymous Coward]

Once they start charging they come under a new set of laws that makes them a regulated telecom. when they were not charging it was arguable they were not under the regulation jurisdiction of the US justice dept or FCC.

Umm, did you know that Skype was always charging for incoming calls from the phone system? They were always regulated.

Thus by giving it away for free they built up a lot of anti-establishement street cred.

Maybe, but I think it had a lot to do with raising the profile of voip as a viable alternative to landline & cell phones, and causing a lot of damage to their biggest competitor, Vonage.

Now they will have to include backdoors for phone line tapping under US laws if they operate inside the USA. Sure they may be based outside the US and have global customers. Think that makes a whoot of difference to the Justice department?

The US gov't doesn't care where your head office is, you're doing business in the US, you fall under US law, the same as any other country.

Might as well say the same for cocaine dealers: they may operate in the US but their corporate headquarters is in Medelin Columbia.

WTF? Possession, importation & sale of ocaine is illegal in just about every country in the world. That has no relevance to telecom.

Re:Now will be a regulated phone company

[Harin_Teb]

Thank God for jurisdictional issues.

If they opperate out of the US then the US won't have jurisdiction over them, so even if they do find them liable for violating fcc rules or soemthing along those lines, they can just thumb their noses at it.

Radio station near me does that. FCC wouldn't grant them enough boradcasting power to cover the area they wanted to cover, so they said screw it relocate across the river to windsor and broadcast at it anyway. Damned good station too.

Re:Now will be a regulated phone company

[schwaang]

Now they will have to include backdoors for phone line tapping under US laws if they operate inside the USA. Sure they may be based outside the US and have global customers. Think that makes a whoot of difference to the Justice department?

One way or another they will end up complying with CALEA, that is, if they aren't already.

After all, why should Skype stand up for your privacy when you won't?

Re:Now will be a regulated phone company

[TheoMurpse]

It's not just the Justice Department. I'd like to introduce you to something called Article III of the US Constitution. And Long Arm Statutes. They give the US and state governments personal jurisdiction over foreign entities who conduct business within the many states, among other things. If you avail yourself of the privileges and protections of American courts (which Skype is doing by practicing continuous and systematic business here), then they have an obligation to obey our laws in this country.

Of course it is right that they have jurisdiction over Skype within the US. After all, how do you think US citizens are protected from foreign corporations' illegal activities within the nation?

Don't be fooled for one minute, either, that this is just some American abomination. Other countries have these kinds of laws, too. I don't know the relevant laws in other countries, but personal jurisdiction like this definitely exists in the UK, Australia and Canada, because personal jurisdiction is at a minimum a common law concept.

Of course, I do not like VoIP being meddled with by government, either. Just please don't try to make the Justice Department a bad guy here.

Re:Use teamspeak instead

[Ford Prefect]

Just use teamspeak. Skype is overrated.

Does teamspeak allow my grandmother (and the rest of my family) to call me on a traditional UK phone number number when I'm in Belgium?

Re:Why Skype ?

[abigor]

1. Dead easy setup.

2. No NAT issues (SIP is retarded with NAT - check out how SDP works).

3. Encryption is built-in and automatic.

4. Same client, multiple platforms thanks to Qt.

5. Voice quality is related to codec, not call setup protocol, which is what SIP is, so your voice quality comment is senseless.

6. Seamless integration with landlines.

7. Lots of features (video, chat, etc., all encrypted).

8. SIP is not consistent across vendors, with many proprietary extensions. ...the list goes on. They just did it right, and it works for everyone. SIP is mostly a joke.

Gak!

[msimm]

I thought *I* had the bad memory problems!

It was never intended to be a free service, just a splashy promotion. I don't think VOIP to POTS is going to be free (they do have to have call centers somewhere to connect those calls, right).

Anyway, no free rides. :) @ $30 its a good deal for people who would use it, those that don't can either use something like SIP (although a SIP to POTS service is going to....cost!) or stick with their free cell minutes.

Re:Why Skype ?

[Spooon69]

I'm certainly not a SIP guru, but going to try and respond some of your points that have me honestly confused.

2. No NAT issues (SIP is retarded with NAT - check out how SDP works).

SIP works with STUN (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN) servers, so you shouldn't really be getting NAT issues. Of course, I'd say that Skype has more NAT issues since it's P2P and would probably work better with an open incoming port. SIP just connects to a server and doesn't require open incoming ports (unless you have your own PBX server at home, which is pretty advanced for the regular SIP user).

What's SDP?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockets_Direct_Protoc ol or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Description_P rotocol or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_discovery

4. Same client, multiple platforms thanks to Qt.

Isn't it better to have many many more clients across every platform than to be stuck with only 1 on every platform? Plus have many more hardware choices as well (if you want to connect your home phone to VoIP)?

5. Voice quality is related to codec, not call setup protocol, which is what SIP is, so your voice quality comment is senseless.

How is SIP's voice quality not related to the chosen codec? And why would a setup protocol dictate voice quality in SIP? I honestly don't understand. Kind of like saying that since I'm driving on the right side of the road my car is faster, when it's engine (codec) that really matters most.

6. Seamless integration with landlines.

How is SIP's integration not "seamless"? Open up your client, dial a phone number and voila, their landline rings. I would say it's better than Skype's actually. You can actually get a real phone number in Japan (for example) that will ring your SIP phone/PC in the US. Skype has this for around 15 countries, but SIP has DID (real landline numbers) numbers for many more countries (if not all). Plus SIP vendors have number portability as well.

8. SIP is not consistent across vendors, with many proprietary extensions. ...the list goes on. They just did it right, and it works for everyone. SIP is mostly a joke.

Most vendors that use SIP can communicate with each other. Some vendors block outside SIP calls (e.g. Vonage) while others use their own proprietary SIP (e.g. Comcast Digital Voice), but they block outside connections too. So it doesn't really matter if they're proprietary or not, a SIP client can't access their network anyway unless they go the landline route.

I've got nothing against Skype (I've used it tons), I just like SIP better because of its better call rates (you can always get a vendor cheaper than Skype), number of choices available (SIP hardware, software, vendors), plus the fact that if you want, you can get down to the nitty gritty and do some amazing stuff with it (want to get sms notifications of voicemail? access 10 different vendors with different rates with just a press of a button on your phone? setup smart call forwarding, if you're not at office, try home, then cell? Check voicemail on the web/email?).

Plus Skype is P2P, which is good for some things, but can use a lot of bandwidth when not in use, that's why some college campuses and businesses don't allow Skype.

Re:Ekiga better than Skype

[abigor]

"What?? Sure it's workable. If your internet connection goes through a firewall or some other kind of filter, then you might have to face some initial setup issues, but the same is true with Skype, according to their web page."

SIP is not workable in a modern NAT environment. I hate to break it to you, but the average user doesn't want to deal with the well-documented firewall woes it brings. As for why it's like this, read up on SDP. SIP was designed to work in a utopian ipv6 world. I've written a lot of voip code, contributed to the Asterisk product, and worked with SIP a lot. It just sucks. I'm sorry.

Note that Asterisk implemented IAX2 specifically because of SIP's crappiness. There is a Skype competitor that uses it; they are based in New Zealand, I think - I actually had an account with them, but I forget their name. Unfortunately, Skype was there first.

And Skype just works. No SIP softphone that I've ever seen just sets up and works like it.

"Not true. You can get an account with a SIP provider (diamondcard, sipdiscount, callwithus, etc.) and connect with landlines that way."

Okay, thanks for the correction. I've used GnomeMeeting extensively in the past, from before it was SIP-based, until they became Ekiga. I guess this is new. It's still not at all obvious on their web page. Can you point out where they detail this procedure, so my mom (for example) could set it up as easily and as quickly as she did SkypeOut?

Also, does it have the equivalent of SkypeIn? That is, can landline users call my softphone?

"Two questions: (1) What kind of "professional" are you talking about; and (2) what does Skype give them that ekiga does not? (Aside from your points above, which I have debunked.)"

1. The business professional who wants to download and install a working product with minimal fuss which has good support. Skype fits the bill. You can call landlines very simply by signing up with SkypeOut, people can call you with SkypeIn, you save hugely on phone bills, etc. I am a contract programmer, and I use Skype every single day to talk to clients in other countries. I have saved a small fortune in phone bills.

2. Corporate support, easy setup, default encryption (there is no SIP standard for this - SIP calls are not private), no SIP stupidity with NAT...etc. Skype fills its niche very well.

Anyway, I think that's enough - you get the idea, and other than a possible SkypeOut correction, you have not debunked my post at all. This is why Skype is a massive success with home users and small business, and Ekiga is used by a few hobbyists.

Re:Other services

[raju1kabir]

Why would anyone want a VOIP service?

Because in the real world, some of us need to talk to people whose telephony environment is outside of our dogmatic influence.