Internet phone service is quickly changing the way we communicate with the world; the industry is growing, and we’re not surprised to see that the rumors were true. Skype is raising prices. 

Last month, Ebay announced that, in January, it will charge for calls from PCs to landline and cell phones; now they’ve finally announced a new “pricing structure” which will put an increase on the cost of all calls. According to Voipbuster, the largest rival of Skype, this pricing plan results in an increase of over 50% for most Skype users.

The pricing strategy is a premium package known as Skype Pro; and will eliminate per-minute charges on SkypeOut calls; oh, and also includes a small connection fee. Sounds good, right?

Any right minded company would not offer a “better deal” when they are not gaining profits in the first place. The catch is the small connection fee of over 5 cents per call, and Skype knows the average call duration is only 7 minutes. It’s a gamble; Skype knows the statistics, and knows the odds.  The house always wins.

The new pricing structure is obviously a plan to increase revenues; Skype is loosing money, and has not effectively been bringing in new users since they were purchased by Ebay.

Voipbuster, almost in a response to this, has added additional countries to their free calling plan; Ebay needs to remember that it’s too easy to uninstall Skype, and replace it with the second best voip provider.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 9:36 am under Opinion.

Read more entries by George Gardner.
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