Whoo hoo!
All Free Skype Service Announced — This should create some unique problems!
Skype, bought by the eBay auction site last September for up to $4.1bn, said all US and Canadian-based Skype customers could now make free calls to traditional phone numbers within their borders using its SkypeOut service.
The move undercuts Yahoo’s rival Phone Out service linked to its instant messenger program. Yahoo itself undercut Skype when it announced Phone Out for the US in March, which allowed users to call within the US and to more than 30 countries for 2 cents a minute or less.
Details of the new free VOIP service here.
According to the Skype site this deal is only good until the end of the year. I expect Yahoo to match the offer.
Sounds like what the long distance carriers were doing not long ago by offering incentives (such as cash) to switch from one carrier to another. The cell phone carriers finally managed to jump in and win that war.
Not quite off topic.
It seems that the Bush Administration has been using it’s anti-terrorist phone call logging system to track the calls of reporters at ABC News, in an effort to identify ‘leakers’. If true, this is a MAJOR development which basically destroys any concept of free press in America. There is no more important concept in the free press than the existence of the ‘confidential source’. If the press can not have confidential sources because the sources fear identification, then we have lost a major element of freedom in America.
More details: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/05/federal_source_.html
Slowly but steadily the America that we love is being dismantled, right under the noses, and with the support of those that claim to be most patriotic. Every day we look more like our old arch-Enemy, with the FBI starting to look a lot like the KGB. The only difference is that we are governed by big Business, instead of a Politburo.
it’s hard to beat free…although I would enjoy being paid to make a call.
I’m trying to use the free skype to call someone in the US from the US, but its saying “You need Skype Credits to call ordinary phones”.
Has anyone else tried this?
An interesting and relevant article… Actually, that’s how I found Dvorak, as the article has a link to this news on skype
Why traditional telecoms will lose against new Voice / Video over IP players
Nothing is free. It’s a universal constant.
hopefully they keep it up – free long distance is a very good thing (for me at least)
Actually, not that great a deal; the real costs are in International mobile…look at outfits like roamabout mobile (www.roamabout.com) offering “skype-out like rates” for mobile roaming users AND you get to take your number with you. Makes more sense to me.