Skype Offering SkypeOut Service for Free 331
Skudd writes "In an effort to boost new customer acquisition, Skype has begun offering its 'SkypeOut' service for free. The free service is slated to last until December 31, 2006." From the article: "While the SkypeOut service will allow free calling to regular phones, the company will continue to charge people to get calls using a service it calls SkypeIn, which costs about $38 for an unlimited 12-month subscription. Consumers can get the service for three months for about $12.80."
Not For Everyone (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:2)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:3, Funny)
For a good time, call...
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:4, Funny)
Whoa...I'm gonna need to sit down after learning this...
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot seems to be very U.S.-centric. Do you have any plans to be more international in your scope?
Slashdot is U.S.-centric. We readily admit this, and really don't see it as a problem. Slashdot is run by Americans, after all, and the vast majority of our readership is in the U.S. We're certainly not opposed to doing more international stories, but we don't have any formal plans for making that happen. All we can really tell you is that if you're outside the U.
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:2)
Oh dear, I'd be a rich man if I could write a script clever enough to filter out any permutation or paraphrasing of this statement - it's the hallmark of idiocy. People claiming just this have wasted massive amounts of other people's time throughout history.
Re:Not For Everyone (Score:2)
Oh well, this *is* slashdot after all, can't expect them to have read anything.
Looking Forward To... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:2)
Love SkypeOut, but it has serious limitations.
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:3, Informative)
Tell BellSloth that. I haven't had a landline in years and yet none of the BellSloth-serviced locations I've lived in has had a dialtone or 911 access.
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:2)
I've been forced to do just that here since the 911 operator for my area is located in a town 45 minutes away and had absolutely no idea where I was talking about when I called in a brush fire that was starting up.
Considering that region wide call centers for 911 are becoming the norm rather than the exception, it rarely goes to the local emergency service anymore, you mi
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:2)
Not as simple as 911, but when I was a kid it was almost as easy to remember.
LK
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:2)
Maybe it was 823-1111.
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:3, Insightful)
That alone is worth the cash.
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:5, Interesting)
Mind you, that's not ALL of them, but enough that the network doesn't go down entirely in disasters.
Re:Looking Forward To... (Score:2)
Don't they have to? (Score:2)
I was under the impression that they couldn't cut that off, by law; similarly, you can turn on any cell phone and even if it isn't registered with the network, you can use it to dial 911. That was at least my understanding of how things worked, I admit I've never tried either.
The house I live in currently has phone wiring, but it's a real mess and I've never used it. Some day I'll have to unscrew one of the jacks (they're all of the old 4-pin variety, a
Re:Don't they have to? (Score:3, Informative)
Problem is that technically VOIP is NOT a phone service.
Phone in most (all?) countries are goverened by a strict set of regulations regarding billing, level of service etc. etc.
VOIP on the other hand is a novelty application for the internet and
is not geverned by any regulations and cannot paricipate in many regulated
telephone services. The problem with 911,999,912,914 type services is
that the service provider is supposed to supply subscriber details and
location details to the emergency operator. "133t5ax0r
Only to the US and Canada... (Score:4, Informative)
cheap international calling - not! (Score:2)
Re:cheap international calling - not! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Only to the US and Canada... (Score:2)
Re:Only to the US and Canada... (Score:2)
Re:Only to the US and Canada... (Score:2)
New partnership? Something else? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or is this some sort of grab for customers so that they can have more P2P nodes?
Just some initial thoughts.
The AOL of VOIP (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The AOL of VOIP (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The AOL of VOIP (Score:5, Informative)
For my US incoming number I use www.sipphone.com
For outgoing calls I use www.voipbuster.com (they also offer an incoming number but I already had one)
www.voipcheap.com or www.voipcheap.co.uk (same stuff really).
I have a Sipura ATA so I do not even need to have my computer turned on to make or recieve calls. You can get other ATAs and I do not think the Sipura is the best but I bought it 3 years ago when it was.
BTW I live in northern Thailand and with this I can call and chat to my friends as much as I like.
Re:The AOL of VOIP (Score:2)
To be fair though, I do have issues with Skype. Th
Re:The AOL of VOIP (Score:2)
How do you work that one out? It works for anyone that has a credit card wherever they are on the planet. As I said, I am currently in Northern Thailand.
Re:The AOL of VOIP (Score:3, Insightful)
Only good until end of 2006 (Score:2, Interesting)
Conspiracy theory: The reason is free is because it's funded by the NSA, that way they won't need to ask anyone for phone records. Shhhhhhhhhhh
Not as good as heroin (Score:2)
Re:Not as good as heroin (Score:2)
If you make any significant quantity of outgoing calls, the overall cost will be cheaper than using Skype anyway, because their outgoing rates aren't very good.
I use Skype only for times when I am wandering down the street in some random city and country and need to make a quick international call; I can just stumble a hotspot, sit down on a stoop, and Skype away. Otherwise, when I'm in the
Huh. (Score:4, Informative)
This offer is valid until..... (Score:3, Informative)
Dialpad (Score:2)
Unfortunately by the time I got around to getting broadband, they had already stopped the unlimited free service, and it was all downhill from there.
I hope whenever people get around to writing the history of VoIP that there's more than a footnote there about Dialpad, because boy
Re:Dialpad (Score:2, Informative)
Skype's strength is its ability to scale. Dialpad wasn't using p2p the way Skype is, and that is the difference. It is a minimal increase in cost per user to grow Skype, but the profit is there. This doesn't apply to SkypeOut, but since they are charging for that they can cover costs (this promotion aside).
The current promotion in North America is just to raise adoption, and as Skype said themselves, the cost is low eno
Re:Dialpad (Score:2)
I think you just answered your own question. Well, there is the advert thing and the fact that making phone calls from your computer is inconvenient. Might as well wonder why people don't still make phone calls standing next to a wall mounted phone box with a crank generator and 2 foot speaker cord.
-matthew
Re:This offer is valid until..... (Score:2)
I am aware that I sound like an advertisment.
Not as useful to someone with a cellphone (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonetheless, it's kind of neat making these free phone calls with Skype and hearing the people's voices come out of my computer speakers.
Have to see if I can get through to Dial-a-Song [dialasong.com] at 718-387-6962. Now it's free if I call from home as well as work...
This is useless. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is useless. (Score:3, Interesting)
I have a cell phone and planned to use only it when I moved into this apartment, but the service is very unreliable here. Calls drop all the time. Then I got Vonage, which was good for several months, but then went downhill. Now I have
Re:This is useless. (Score:3, Insightful)
What's that thing you get in the mail each month from your provider? A donation request? The cheapest cell phone plans anymore run $40 for 750 anytime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends, if you're lucky. I pay $15/mo for 150 anytime minutes on my cell phone, but that's a rare exception (threatening to leave after being a customer for 2-3 years works wonders sometimes). I also pay $15/mo for 500 minutes with Vonage (and a very low rate after that such that I would need t
Re:This is useless. (Score:2)
I just tried the Skype homepage direct from outside the USA, and then again using a USA proxy server.
From outside the USA the page looked the same as always.
Using the proxy server within the USA (the same one I had to use to get them to take my credit card!), there's a big message that says "Free calls within the US and Canada to all phones", accompanied by this image [skype.com].
If you have access to a VPN connection via the US, I assume you could take advantage of this, but at the same time, I think most people w
All you need is... (Score:2)
Re:All you need is... (Score:2)
Unless your computer has multiple analog audio outs, and you can set it up so that Skype uses one and your regular audio uses the other, every time you want to make or answer a call you'll have to swap cables. Not cool.
My feeling is that to use Skype, most people are going to want a USB headset or phone, so they can leave it attache
Hi is Ben there? Last name Dover? (Score:2)
Any better than it was? (Score:2)
Hm, not working. (Score:2)
Also... (Score:2)
SkypeOut service (Score:3)
I've been using SkypeOut for quite some time now. I first purchased SkypeOut credit in Oct. 2004. My main motivation has been that my brother lives in Beijing and I live in Toronto. But I also talk with other family and friends quite regularly using the feature. One thing I've noticed: my connection and audio quality tend to be better to when I'm talking to my Brother in Beijing than when I'm talking to my wife while I'm travelling in the US. Skype has gradually become more and more important in my suite of communication tools. I'd much rather Skype someone than email them. I used to use Yahoo! messenger and ICQ quite a bit. I've completely stopped. Maybe they've improved, but Skype's conference call/chat feature has been extremely helpful. I did an hour-long 3-way business call between Toronto, Baltimore and London in the UK for only a few dollars!
All that said, there's a problem too: I've been using it on my laptop and it means carrying around a headset with a microphone. The built-in mic is terrible. For anyone adopting Skype as a phone replacement (which it sill isn't for me), this is an important consideration. The big "discount" they are giving with free SkypeOut in North America will probably help adoption here a little, but I'm not convinced it will make a really big splash. I think they need to figure out a nice way to integrate with a cell-phone-like headset that still works through one's computer/laptop or on one's wireless LAN. This would be the item that would allow me to get rid of my home/office phones.
Fascinating to me how the economics have ended up (Score:5, Interesting)
With most VoIP, inbound call phone numbers are at least as expensive to get as outbound when you get to any kind of volume. I'm not talking about 1 line for a few bucks, or a few test lines at fixed cost, but the ability to just recieve a bunch of calls at once on a phone number. It comes down to about $18 (US) for the ability to recieve each concurrent inbound call. You can get unlimited at a penny or two per minute per call, but that ends up being more expensive if you do good pooling with a fixed number of lines. Outbound can be as little as half that.
Where is the cost in all this? The cost is the connection to the copper based system. At some point, somewhere, someone has to get paid for a link to that big addressing system.
The sick part is, most of the big telcos are doing voip any way, and their ability to hold onto that master address space is the key last item for them to hold the power to charge what they do. ENID (including free systems) are functional -- and can work just like DNS -- but the providers wont use it.
There's a system (ENID based, I believe) that would allow any number you dial from your regular phone or cell phone to be checked against a registry, and if a voip address is listed for it, the telco could bypass the entire infrastructure and route the call directly to the person you called over voip. So if I registered a voip address to my phone number (which I have done) and you called me from say, Verizon Wireless, they could route the call to me without going over a single bit of big telco as anything other than VoIP. No telco switching involved. It would bypass my per-minute inbound costs entirely other than my internet connection.
It works if you call from a voip phone that knows about the registry (Asterisk based systems, for example can do this). The telcos and cell companies don't do it. Why not? As a whole, they make their money by controlling that master address -- the phone number.
Keep hoping they ignore it; alternative is worse. (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if they were to campaign to make it illegal if it ever starts to make significant inroads on their cartel--excuse me, business model.
Let's see, what excuse would they use for outlawing it? Child pornography is always a guaranteed sell, but hard to work in this case. Maybe they could roll it into the n
ENID - ENUM (Score:2, Informative)
"In short, a server with ENUM support will lookup a dialled telephone number in DNS to see if there's alternate ways to set up the call instead of just calling out on the PSTN telephone line. ENUM may contain a reference to a SIP URL, a telephone number to dial, a web page or an e-mail address. "
But I'm Po' (Score:2, Informative)
1) Because i move all the time, i don't maintain a landline;
1) All of my family and friends are out of town;
2) cell phones in Canada haven't been deregulated yet and Rogers, Bell, Telus, etc., charge through the nose and other unpleasant orifices.
Skype is making my life a HECK of a lot easier. I've tried it already... a lot... and it works wo
Skype trying to reach performance goals ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also this is a good way to compete with Yahoo! Messenger, which was recently upgraded to use the same voice codec [globalipsound.com] as skype.
Skype & Security (Score:5, Informative)
Hogwash (Score:3, Interesting)
I can tap your home phone remotely with 10 dollars of equpment from Radio Shack.
Even if the data is totally unencrypted, it is orders of magnitude harder to tap someone's internet connection than their phone connection. Anyone can splice in a twisted pair to recieve all your incoming calls and attach a small RF transmitter with a few miles range, and odds are great that you would never even notice it, or the jack box on the side of your house. It is much
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Nothing new but really nice anyway! (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.sipdiscount.com/ [sipdiscount.com]
http://www.voipcheap.com/ [voipcheap.com]
voipdiscount.com
voipstunt.com
gives... well... around 40 countries free! (well... you pay 10euros for 2 or 3 months and you can call a lot of countries for 0 cent/min or 1 cent/min)
I use it a lot (with sjphone) and for this price... this is unbeatable! But for a good VOIP, you need a good High Speed Internet Access! A delay of 1 or 2 seconds and cause a hang up before you can even try to say "hello"
sip compatible with any hardware SIP or softphone like sjPhone (mac, pc, linux, pda...)
sip server: sip.voipbuster.com (port 5060)
domain: voipbuster.com
stun server: stun.voipbuster.com
sip server: sip1.sipdiscount.com (port 5060)
domain: sipdiscount.com
stun server: stun.sipdiscount.com
etc
Faxes? (Score:2)
I'm paying for a land line at home only to send/receives faxes. Being able to use Skype with a fax would be a significant drop in costs for me.
Re:Faxes? (Score:3, Informative)
I think some VoIP systems (Vonage) are smart enough to increase the bandwidth so as to not block fax and data calls
Re:Faxes? (Score:2)
There are internet based fax services you can use, you know. Just scan your document and upload it to their site to send. And download any faxes you recieve. Actually, I think some do it by email. Fax machines are SOO 90's. I can't believe they are still around.
-matthew
Re:Faxes? (Score:2)
I work in land development and I'm on construction sites quite a bit. As SOP, the contractor automatically gets temporary power, water and a land line. Internet access just isn't available for construction sites and EVDO access is also hard to get. I'd also have doubts that job supervisors could handle a laptop and internet acces.
So the only way to communicate with these sites are with a land line. Getting faxes from them are the only reason I keep a lan
How good is skype ? (Score:2)
It depends on alot of different things.... (Score:2)
You might want to just try it to see if it works well for you.
One bit of bad news for you, looking at your web page, is that the linux skype client is an old version that doesnt include video. For many people, myself included, the linux client doesnt work as well
Some Hidden Benefits (Score:3, Informative)
Works great, but -- XP SP2 patch required (Score:3, Informative)
Worked beautifully. Neither I nor my friend had any problem hearing, and it didn't sound like a speaker phone all -- none of those typical speakerphone "click on/click off" noises at all. We could even both tallk at the same time, with both of us more-or-less audible. It was just about as if my friend was in the same room as me. (Some of the credit is probably due to my soundcard.)
I did have a major CPU utilization problem with Skype until I uninstalled McAfee's firewall, which made the audio terrible. McAfee had long been disabled in favor of (the free, better, not reliant on IE and Active-X) Kerio, but I hadn't gotten around to removing it entirely. Once removed, no problem with Skype at all.
Also, as I have Windows XP SP2, it was necessary to install this TCPIP.sys patch [lvllord.de] to get around Microsoft's "helpfulness".
For those having problems... (Score:4, Informative)
I was able to test the free SkypeOut by calling my home phone from my PowerBook, but not without some difficulty. At first it wouldn't dial the number at all -- apparently you need to use a bit of a special incantation to get it to dial.
On my first attempt, I tried to do a ten digit dial (xxx-xxx-xxxx), but it wouldn't let me dial out. So I next tried adding a 1 in front of the number (1-xxx-xxx-xxxx), but again, no-go.
The trick? You must put a plus sign ('+') in front of the 1 (that is, dial "+1-xxx-xxx-xxxx"). Then it works just fine. But otherwise, it doesn't work at all -- the call button will be completely disabled.
I wonder however if this won't be ripe for abuse. All Skype calls show up as being from 000-012-3456, and I just know there are some asshats out there who are going to start using this for obscene phone calls, or other negative abuses of the system.
Anyhow, if you can't get your version of Skype to work, try it with the + symbol in front of the 1. On the latest Mac version at least, this is the only way it will work correctly.
Yaz.
Re:For those having problems... (Score:2)
The trick? You must put a plus sign ('+') in front of the 1 (that is, dial "+1-xxx-xxx-xxxx")
This is pretty well documented. Go to the SkypeOut page at skype.com, and it's there in the How to get calling [skype.com] link. Or in the Skype Dashboard widget mentioned on the OSX versio
Re:For those having problems... (Score:2)
Yes -- I discovered it when I went to Skype's SkypeOut information page, although admittedly at first I overlooked it. Let's face it -- many people are used to seeing the + sign in phone numbers when they are written to denote the country code part, but you never actually dial the plus sign, just the digits. So when I first saw it, my first inclination was to dial the number as 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx, without the plus.
As well, I would imagine for many people like myself who have
Re:For those having problems... (Score:2)
1. To disambiguate from numeric Skype IDs.
2. For years the plus notation has been the correct way to write phone numbers. When you store a number on your cell phone, you use a plus sign, right? Else you won't be able to dial it when you go to another country where the dialing sequences are different. Come to think of it, maybe this is a 21st
Re:For those having problems... (Score:2)
So if you store all your phone numbers on your GSM phone with +, then you can call all your contacts in all contries on the planet, without worrying about what the international dailout code is. An US phone number should be stored like "+1 555 867 5309". If your in the US then +1 is "dropped".
Re:For those having problems... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not arguing that the country code shound't be required. That just makes sense. It's the plus symbol that is extraneous.
Why? I've survived for several decades without doing this. Why has it suddenly become a requirement?
Yaz.
What about the money already on my account? (Score:3, Interesting)
From their Terms Of Service page: "A credit balance for Skype Credit expires 180 days after the last chargeable use of the Skype Credit. Credit balances that are not used within the said 180 day period will be lost."(emphasis mine) I assume that means that free calls don't count as "chargable use" so even if I place SkypeOut calls every day for the next few months my money would still disappear at the end of September?
If that's the case, looks like I'll be submitting a refund request. Don't misunderstand me - I'm definitely not complaining about free service, but if I end up losing all my current balance then it's not free.
Now that I think about it, I wonder how many people will be burned by this and all these 'unused' balances will go straight into Skype's coffers.
Re:What about the money already on my account? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about the money already on my account? (Score:2)
Dialpad.com (Score:2)
Great! Skype never accepted my CC before... (Score:2)
How to get it free? (Score:2)
Btw, I'm not in the U.S. right now. Could this be the reason? Perhaps Skype is auto-detecting me as not being in the states so it's not letting me have it for free?
Gizmo (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, sorry that sounds like an advertisement, but
Re:RogersCustomers, forget Rogers Home Phone (Score:3, Informative)
Telecom service companies need to go down. Communication companies should be charging what the service is WORTH.
http://www.ihaterogers.ca/ [ihaterogers.ca]
Re:RogersCustomers, forget Rogers Home Phone (Score:2)
could someone include that into the headline please ?
the european telecom leaders started to get heart-attacks 5 seconds ago
Re:RogersCustomers, forget Rogers Home Phone (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about rogers per se, but if Roger's voip is anything like what its counterpart Shaw is offering, it deserves to be more expensive, its run on a dedicated network, separate from their broadband internet service -- meaning it doesn't rely on your internet being up!
This dedicated network is also independantly powered and with backup, right down to including a battery backup for your
Re:activation (Score:3, Informative)
Re:activation (Score:4, Informative)
I tested it by creating a new UID. The first two times I tried calling a friend's mobile phone, I got error messages. The third time and every time after was smooth sailing. The sound isn't the best, not cell phone quality, but it works. The number showed up as "000123456" on the recipient's phone, so its usefulness is limited; those who screen calls would likely not pick up, and since you can't get incoming on it without upgrading - well.
If you have an outgoing number, I'm sure you can solve this issue by being issued an incoming number. IMO, it seems to be a loss leader of sorts, to get folks to upgrade to paid service.
Re:activation (Score:2)
If you have an outgoing number, I'm sure you can solve this issue by being issued an incoming number. IMO, it seems to be a loss leader of sorts, to get folks to upgrade to paid service.
Subscribing to SkypeIN does not change your outgoing ID. It still shows 0123456789.
Re:activation (Score:2)
Re:And yet (Score:2, Interesting)
I have an IP starting with 7 and skypeout calls still consume credits.
Re:And yet (Score:2, Interesting)