Internet telephone service Skype said on Wednesday that it would charge customers $29.95 a year for unlimited calling in the United States and Canada, a service it had offered free since May.
eBay Inc.’s Skype, which competes with traditional phone companies and Web operators like Vonage Holdings Corp. for customers, said subscribers who sign up for the plan before January 31 will get the service for half price.
The service covers calls to mobile phones or traditional wire line phones from computers or from a new category of Internet-connected phones that run Skype software.
Customers who do not want to pay a subscription could also opt to pay for calls at the rate of 2.1 cents a minute which it charged before the promotion.
Skype calls from computer to computer would still be free for its customers. The company said it would consider extending the service for international calls.
So, back to their original rate — with the base expanded about 30%. Still better quality sound than POTS — and a heck of a lot cheaper.
Ok, someone please explain to me why I would need Skype if I’m already on a cell phone plan with nationwide calling? Unless I can get rid of my cell phone and Skype can provide a service where I can carry around a phone all day and call no matter where I am, I don’t see the usefulness of it. It seems more suited to teenagers who want to talk for hours on end while they are at their computers. Unless you are sitting at a computer all day, Skype is useless. What about if you are driving? What if I’m out in the middle of nowhere?
“Ok, someone please explain to me why I would need Skype if I’m already on a cell phone plan with nationwide calling?”
Because everyone is not you?! That’s like asking, “Why do I need a car when I never drive?!”
A better question would be: Why anyone would need to spend all of that money one a cell phone plan with nationwide calling when they can get Skype for a heck of a lot less? If you do business traveling, use your laptop. If you’re in the supermarket, wait till you get home to make the call. Does anyone really need to make a call in a checkout line?!
Allow me to use Skype to make my DirecTV calls and I’d drop POTS in a second, otherwise the use case for cell phones makes a lot more sense… and justifies the cost… than VoIP.
Damn I hate {u}WordPress{/u} every time u post a comment here it BLOWS UP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ya I.m pissed 😉
I’ve tried about 10 skype-out calls and I’ve never got a decent connection. These were made from home(cable-modem), work (100MB in a research university) and various WiFi (hotels, airports).
Perhaps I’ve just had terrible luck but the odds wouldn’t seem to favor that. In fact, the crappy Skype experience has kept me from any VOIP service at home.
Yea, VOIP is way over rated. I switched to Vonage when a friend raved about the quality and how cheap it was. When I started having dropped calls, calls going directly to VM, callers not hearing me, etc. I switched back to a land line. Funny thing is when I mentioned this to my ‘friend’, he said “oh yea, it does that to me sometimes too”.
The truth is VOIP is a cheaper service with less quality. No thanks!
I’ll wait until the bugs get worked out.
voips is useful if u are making international calls – MUCH cheaper than using a cellular device.
Ummmmm…….
What’s wrong with this heading: “Skype to START charging for calls to phones AGAIN”? They are starting again? Isn’t that a little bit of a contradiction? Better to say: “Skype to charge for calls to phone again”. Still, it’s better than mosts place I’ve seen this news, which say that Skype is going to START to charge, making no note that they used to charge.
By the way, why is this really news? Skype has said all along the free calls are only until the end of this year…..
#3 — James, especially if you call retention instead of the CSR’s, you can wait out the electric receptionist instead trying to beep through. That’s how I handle D*.
#9 — Whine to Reuters — if you clicked the link, you’d see we just cut-and-pasted their headline.
One can have a cell phone with nationwide coverage and still need something like skype. I have Sprint, which works ok around the country but blows massive chunks where I live on Roosevelt Island in NYC. So I use skype to make calls from home.
Comment number 1 is just inept. Does this clown realize that the Skype software puts a “call number” icon next to phone numbers on websites. Besides being helpful to ecommerce, it is a huge benefit to those of us who rely on web-based CRM sollutions. Maybe this bozo is one of those guys who weaves in and out of traffic while he screams into his cell phone. But for those of us who deal in multiple countries and time zones, the Skype solution is solid. It isnt perfect, but it beats my radioactive cell phone.
[edited: see comments guide]
Alix — living in a valley, even though only a half-mile from a cell tower, I have the same problem as yours. That’s why I rely most of all on VOIP.
I will be trying out a repeater-antenna/in-home-amp in a week or two that I hope will resolve cell phone reception. Skype-in doesn’t help local friends to call in — all their available prefixes are outside local calling crappola from our Telco. If it works, I’ll do a small piece about it.
Yo Eideard….. #9 was clearly goofing around. You clearly have no sense of humor. Oh, and no originallity either. Cut and paste…. blah, blah, blah…..
There are always a few “yo-yo’s” — aren’t there?
I have found free Skype to be better than vonage or any other VOIP. While skype may charge for land lines, I think it still will be free to call skype to skype users around the globe. Now that Belkin and Netgear have phones that allow one to use skype on Wifi networks without a PC, I understand why Verizon was so big on net neutrality. Skype phones may put them out of business or at least take a chunk of their revenues.
The other part of this equation is the development of mesh networks that allow extremely fast wireless internet on the cheap. If these take off like I have been told they may, the cell phone, POTS, and wired internet may be a thing of the past. PC free skype phones and mesh wireless networks may have been the real reason for net neutrality.
Yo Eideard,
good comeback….. now there’s the spirit !!!