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

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the all-good-things-must-end dept.

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."

3 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Classic Marketing by _merlin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:Use teamspeak instead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. Re:Why Skype ? by Spooon69 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.