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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."
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.
You've got a deal. Free would be nice, but not bad considering I can call anywhere anytime for that much...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Could anyone explain to me why Skype is so popular ? Is it simply a case of they marketed the best and had the easiest to use software ? They certainly aren't any good when it comes to following standards (SIP). Their voice quality is certainly much worse than a good SIP connection, or MSN, or Ventrilo and it's probably even worse than Teamspeak. There's amazingly high latency in most Skype calls I've ever tried. So tell me, why is it so damn popular ?
Just use teamspeak. Skype is overrated.
Are you viral marketing?
Wow. It takes a real goddamn genius to come up with an idea like that. They're lucky they have eBay's expertise to draw on, because I just can't imagine a mere mortal coming up with an idea like that.
The SkypeOut page says it will only be $14.99. I always recommend taking the word from the good old horses mouth.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
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.
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.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Here are a few more that I have been working on:
Click-to-change-channels
Click-to-order-sofas
Click-to-hangup
Click-to-start-microwave
patents pending of course
Skype out started as a pay service the (with much aplomb) they announced they'd make it free for calls through the end of the year. Honestly, I'd consider this pretty generous. Kind of a win-win for people who were interested in using it (or computer people who were savvy and interested in free calls).
./). I'm not 100% sure, but as I recall their price was cheap, but I don't suspect $30 a year flat-fee cheap (I charged mine with about $10 and used it until I got bored/distracted, which happens frequently).
I used the service prior to their promotion. It was cheap and worked as advertised (you might remember, since they had/have a Linux client they made
Anyway, I don't think this is a bait-and-switch if thats what you meant. Sounds like they are ending a very long promotion with a new promotion. Maybe I'll sign up (cell phone minutes! eek!).
Quack, quack.
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?
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
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?
No. However, it'll help her coordinate with the rest of the raid in her guild's next Ony run.
Sheesh. Get some perspective.
I thought *I* had the bad memory problems!
:) @ $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.
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.
Quack, quack.
Anyone who has ever used Ekiga will never use Skype again. Ekiga is a VoIP client with video and IM capability, phone book, etc. and it has excellent sound quality. You can get the software here: http://ekiga.org/ and if you don't have a VoIP address yet you can get one here: http://ekiga.net/ or here: http://www.freeworlddialup.com/
There are some quirks with Betamax though:
- They operate VoIP services under a dozen or so brand names and each brand has different rates. For an up-to-date comparison, see: http://backsla.sh/betamax
- They keep changing rates and the list of free countries, but the core countries tend to remain the same.
- To get free VoIP calls, you must top up 10 euros (+GST) every three or four months (depending on which of their brands you are using). Free calls are free calls - those 10 euros you can use for calling other, non-free, destinations. Also, credit does not expire so you can keep topping up until you finally have a use for all that credit (or the company folds
;).
- There is a limit on the amount of free calls - 300 minutes in a floating 7 day window, though they do not seem to be very exact about this. Sometimes, they screw up and charge for a supposedly free call (at a still impressive 1 cent a minute). But far more often than that, I end up calling for way over 300 minutes per week and still get charged nothing.
- They also offer a call-back service where you type in your phone number and the one you want to call. Both phones then ring and a connection is established between them. If both phones would have normally been free to call, this type of call is free as well. There is only a 5 cent or so set-up charge. A minor annoyance is that this gets charged even if the line on the other side is busy or nobody picks up.
- Finally, all calls get disconnected after one hour. My guess would be this is because with each free call you make, they are actually losing some money and they do not want to keep paying when people forget to properly hang up their phones...
All in all, I am topping up 10 euros (+GST) every few months, am calling family all over the world for free and get much better rates for mobiles and exotic destinations than I have ever seen from any other provider. I wouldn't know why I would ever consider SkypeIn + SkypeOut.This service is actually really handy at work, where SIP may not work due to firewall restrictions. You can still call out by having your office phone be called back.
Because in the real world, some of us need to talk to people whose telephony environment is outside of our dogmatic influence.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
I don't know about everyone else, but I've found that Skype's "free" calls from the US to other US phones to be horrible.
I've used Skype for almost two years now, and call quality to landlines has generally been good, at least acceptable. When I was in the States last June (I live in Ecuador), I made some free calls to my parents' landline and cell phone from a 3mb DSL connection. It sucked rocks! We could barely understand each other. Calling the very same number from the jungle of Ecuador over a 128kb DSL connection and paying Skype's 2.2 cents a minute, the connection was fine.
Also calling 1-800 numbers with Skype from Ecuador, which does not cost anything, sometimes renders horrible quality (and sometimes it is OK).
In any case, I think their "promotion" was a horrible idea. I would have gladly payed the 2.2 cents a minute from the States to get as good a connection as I do in Ecuador. I wonder how many people think badly of their service because of that.
I use both SIP and Skype, but overall I feel that SIP is a better solution.
Skype to Skype calls work very well, but the quality of Skype to PTSN us less than acceptable. Even though 'Skype Out' is presently free, I've usually had to pick up a real phone to complete my call because of excessive latency, dropouts, and overall poor frequency response. It's definitely worse than a bad cell phone connection - not a service that I would ever consider paying for. The other problem with Skype is that there are no low cost stand alone network adapters as there are with SIP. A computer or an expensive Skype phone is required to complete the call. Furthermore, bandwidth on your computer and network can be used to process calls for other Skype users even though you are not making a call, as long as the application is running.
I also use SIP with Free World Dialup service and Direct IP dialing. My Sipura SIP adapter has 2 connections. An ethernet cable to my router provides the network connection and a regular telephone plugs into the adapter. The system runs stand alone 24/7 without a computer. Everything works like a normal phone. NAT is minor an annoyance, but not a serious problem. I supply my real IP address to the SIP adapter and the problem is solved. I've never needed to use a STUN server. Overall, the quality has been as good or better than PTSN.