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Wednesday, December 13, 2006

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Skype Pulls The Plug On Free Calls to Landline and Mobile Devices

Skype We knew it was coming. Skype, the Internet calling service, has announced plans to begin charing for their service to land line and mobile devices beginning January 1. These calls had been free since last spring in a very clever marketing technique to woo customers. Skype will charge an annual $29.95 fee for unlimited “SkypeOut” calls in the US and Canada. If you buy before Jan 31, you can get the first year for $14.95. It will be interesting to see who goes for this and who doesn’t. For my usage, the quality will need to get better before I feel like I can use SkypeOut calling as a replacment and not just a curiosity.

Via The New York Times

Mobile

12/13/2006 9:46 AM MST

Skype Pulls The Plug On Free Calls to Landline and Mobile Devices Comments [5] | Digg This | del.icio.us | Citations

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 10:21:47 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)

The New York Times article doesn't mention the problem Skype is having running the SkypeOut feature. Details of how you can get trapped with the service not working for weeks are at:
http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=70798

Mickey Segal

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 3:30:59 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)

Is it just me or has Skype steadily gotten worse over the last several months. The call quality is just terrible. I've tried port forwarding reverting back to earlier releases, etc, but nothing has worked. Sure glad I still have Vonage.

Frick

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 3:59:39 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)

Dear Skype,

I am NOT wiolling to pay you for the inconsistent service I get. Some days it works well, some days hardly at all.

Get it fixed, then you have a justification for charging me something.

Thank you.

Dennis Rice

Dennis Rice

Wednesday, December 13, 2006 5:42:16 PM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)

Last I checked, the flaw with Skype is that it relies solely on users for bandwidth. All their calls get routed through user computers. That system is great when many users are online, but they have no control over it. Unless they add their own servers to the mix, they cannot provide reliable service.

That said, $15 for a year is not a bad deal for SkypeOut. I found it very useful when my phone was out of commission. Also, because I use TEO 3.0, I have a record of the Skype calls I make. Assuming they pull in more users, which enhances their service, I may be persuaded to gamble $15 on SkypeOut.

Sumocat

Thursday, December 14, 2006 7:37:30 AM (Mountain Standard Time, UTC-07:00)

I probably will shell out the $15... I've used Skype Out enough that I'd run up that much on long distance anyway. The quality is inconsistent... but no worse than transcontinental long distance was 50 years ago.

It's probably not such a deal for those who already have a cell plan with good roving, but for us without the price is attractive.

-- Steve

Anton P. Nym

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