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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.
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.
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.
From the page linked:
Unlimited Calling gives you a full year of unlimited calls to anyone, on any phone, within the US and Canada for just $14.95.
($29.95 after January 31st 2007)
It's also mentionned in the summary.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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