Skype new version — but are there big savings?
Shortly after Skype was launched it was placed on every machine in this book publishing company. We went further. We used hand-sets that plugged into the USB port instead of the standard microphone and headsets. Our Skype machines looked like phones, acted like phones. Only possibly with better reception.
First some Skype history checked carefully with Wikipedia:
Skype is software that allows users to make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls to other users of the service and to free-of-charge numbers are free, while calls to other landlines and mobile phones can be made for a fee. Additional features include instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing.
It was created by entrepreneurs Niklas Zennström, Janus Friis, and a team of software developers based in Tallinn, Estonia. The Skype Group has its headquarters in Luxembourg, with offices in London, Tallinn, Tartu, Stockholm, Prague, and San Jose.
Skype has experienced rapid growth in popular usage since the launch of its services. It was acquired by eBay in September 2005 for $2.6 billion.
Difficult to get a technical reading on this but Skype service appeared to fall off about the time it will taken over by eBay and calls are regularly cut short which suggest an intentional policy rather than a technical glitch.
Still the rules remain the same.
Skype to Skype is free.
Skype to anything else is minimal. But not as minimal as all that.
The figures are difficult — impossible in some cases — to work out.
Take Britain where we call about a dozen times a day:
The Skype tariff calling Skype to Skype is, at the moment, free.
After that it gets complex. All price are in US dollars. Your normal charge to the UK is somewhere between $0.021 and $0.024 per minute although with other services you can do better than that.
What you need to watch like a hawk is the innocent sounding Premium Rate. Innocently Skype tell us:
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 1 $ 0.486 $ 0.559
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 2 $ 0.971 $ 1.117
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 3 $ 1.457 $ 1.676
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 4 $ 2.428 $ 2.792
United Kingdom – Premium Rate – Band 5 $ 2.914 $ 3.351
To avoid these disasters watch for the dialing codes (0)90 and (0)91 because then you can be charged as much as $3.35 a minute and no one will go out of their way to tell you. And the speed the call will be handled will break no sound barriers.
Note also the calls are charged at a per minute rate, and calls are rounded up to the minute (for example, a two minute, 30 second call will be rounded up to three minutes). If your billing address is within the EU, you will be charged 15% VAT on top of the amount you require when you buy Skype Credit — for example, if you order $10 of Skype Credit you will be charged $11.50 in total.
We avoid all that nonsense we use phone cards from Telephone Cards.com.au and use them if we are calling a number which is NOT a Skype number because normally it works out cheaper. Some times a lot cheaper.
Australia, where this is being written, was the venue for the first of a series of events around the globe to launch Skype for Windows 4.0, described by Dan Neary Skype’s VP and general manager Asia Pacific as ‘probably the most significant launch in Skype’s five-year history.’
Well, yes, what is significant about it?
As far as could be told from a Grumpy Old Man perspective, very, very little. Version 4.0 has been out in beta since June 2008 — following in Google’s footsteps ‘
What it is all about is video. This is increasing by leaps and bounds — say 25% of all current calls — and you can now make a direct video call instead of sound firsta and then link video.
Full screen video is also now available and it works a treat on most of the new standard notebooks.
Version 4.0 also incorporates a new bandwidth manager that, according to Skype, ‘ensures that consumers have the very best Skype video calling experience possible even on a low bandwidth connection.’
Dan Neary said, ‘We aim to put Skype on many more devices. At CES we announced Skype for Android. There is a version for the iPhone coming, but no announcement on that yet.’
He said Skype now had 405 million users who generated 20 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes in Q4 of 2008, a figure growing at 72% per year. He claimed that Skype now accounts for 8% of all international call minutes, and that 30% of customers use Skype for business calls.
At a guess that means Skype is getting ready to charge for what it will call something like Premium Band video even when it is Skype to Skype. Because not matter how many samples we are shown Skype video connections they are nowhere near as good as television — think YouTube.
An example of the way the company is thinking is SkypeIn.
This gives Skype users their own personal phone number which allows them to receive inbound calls from ordinary phones. Australia is the 14th country in the world to receive SkypeIn, and is already available in the US, the UK, Brazil, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland.
So, for example, SkypeIn users in Australia can set the Skype phone number in any capital city. A Skype user living in Sydney but who has family or friends in Melbourne can choose to have their phone number set in Melbourne.
Family can then call the Melbourne number, (which will cost serious money UNLESS they are using a phone card) which is then routed via the Internet to the Skype user’s Sydney base. The Melbourne caller only pays for the local call which is serious money unless you are on one of the el cheapo cards.
A 12 month SkypeIn subscription costs 30 euros (approximately AU$50), with a three month subscription costing 10 Euros (approximately AU$16).
Skype has given a press conference which actually tells very little. We already knew Skype was going to offer ringtones which does not inspire confidence. And unless you have Skype to Skype calls — growing by the day — in many cases it will be seriously more expensive than a prepaid card.
Geoffrey Prentice, is Skype general manager for Asia and Latin America who was the first employee at Skype and worked with Niklas and Janus.
He oversaw the expansion of Skype into Asia and Latin America and was responsible for its initial business plan development and fund-raising activities. He said the company would continue to add new functionality to Skype as a way of differentiating themselves from other free Internet voice services like Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger.
He said, ‘We want to keep adding new and different things to the experience for the user.’
Somehow one feels he left out the word free.
Related Posts:
November 23rd, 2011
Amazing things here. I am very happy to look your post. Thanks a lot and I’m looking forward to contact you. Will you please drop me a mail?