Microsoft Quietly Axes Skype Credit and Phone Number Sales To Push Subscriptions

Bad news for anyone out there who still uses Skype: The Microsoft-owned phone and messaging platform has quietly stopped letting users top-up accounts with credit and buy Skype phone numbers. From a report: Instead, Skype is locking into SaaS mode: It's pushing users to take monthly subscriptions for regional and global Skype-to-phone plans, for a set monthly fee, likely impacting millions of people. The most recent figures Microsoft released for Skype last year said it had 36 million daily active users.

Skype is still a thing?

[sg_oneill]

I honestly thought Skype had been folded into Teams or something. I'm genuinely surprised Skype is still a thing. It used to be everywhere, but then it wasn't, and I just assumed MS mismanaged to death and folded it into its dumb business things,

Apparently it has 36mil users? That surprises me.

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[jhecht]

Skype stopped working for me a year or two ago on a Mac. Teams barely works incoming. I've never bothered to try to get either of them working.

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[tlhIngan]

I honestly thought Skype had been folded into Teams or something. I'm genuinely surprised Skype is still a thing. It used to be everywhere, but then it wasn't, and I just assumed MS mismanaged to death and folded it into its dumb business things,

Apparently it has 36mil users? That surprises me.

It's still around. Teams was what happened to "Skype for Business" aka Lync. The two were supposed to be merged, but it went so horribly they remained completely incompatible with each other.

So Skype remained skype, a

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[mjwx]

I honestly thought Skype had been folded into Teams or something. I'm genuinely surprised Skype is still a thing. It used to be everywhere, but then it wasn't, and I just assumed MS mismanaged to death and folded it into its dumb business things,

Apparently it has 36mil users? That surprises me.

35,999,450 spammers, the rest genuine users.

Skype's been OK in the past when I've been stuck overseas and needed to call back to the UK or Australia without it costing me Elevnty Billion Quatloos per minute. You can usually get a few hours for about 5-7 USD. Enough to call your bank, airline, whatever over a WiFi connection without paying a kings ransom to your mobile phone provider for roaming.

Useful in a pinch as it's easy to set up.

However once you've sorted what you need to, uninstall the app a

Subscriptions aren't always a bad thing

[Baron_Yam]

If you're using an ongoing service, then there should be an ongoing operating fee.

However, with something like Skype? The client software value is marginal, and the required service is a publicly available index server to help endpoints initiate a P2P connection. That ought to be pennies a month.

Essentially, it should be something a large company throws out there for goodwill.

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[zekica]

Skype is for a long time now no longer P2P, all calls are relayed through Microsoft.

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[Baron_Yam]

But it doesn't have to, that's just silly if it's for 1:1 calls.

I can't imagine anyone's still using it for large group calls. I know it technically supports up to 100, but really? C'mon, people use Zoom and Teams for the most part.

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[_merlin]

US government pressured them into it after they bought Skype. They wanted MS to make it easy to wiretap calls.

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[kaur]

It was more like managers at Redmond did not understand nor trust this "peer to peer thing" that was engineered by some hackers in Eastern Europe. Thus they wanted to replace it with a normal, server-based, invented-and-implemented in Redmond tech. Took them a few tries but the finally succeeded, and then failed again.

I don't think US government had much influence over that, just the standard Microsoft "not invented here" syndrome.

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[UnknowingFool]

But it doesn't have to, that's just silly if it's for 1:1 calls.

This has always been the problem with the original Skype from the business side. Originally Skype was used for consumers to connect 1:1. When MS bought it they realized it did not scale well for businesses. For example, this morning I had a team meeting with 10 people. So MS changed how it worked because of business needs. These days, Skype is nothing compared to the original design. Why MS bought it was probably for the name and existing user base; however, as Skype has gotten crappier to use over the year

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[equivocal]

Wasn't there a patent? Switching from p2p to central hub was to work around the troll.

"likely impacting millions of people"

[dmay34]

.... not likely.

Can't they just get ScreenShare working?

[Murdoch5]

Well, I was going to point out that on Fedora 41 Skype still doesn't have a functional screen sharing functionality. Of course, the problem is that Skype isn't designed for Wayland, which Microsoft has absolutely no excuse for, not in 2024. I was going to say that, and leave it alone, but, as of 11:30am EST, Skype can't even open and just crashes immediately.

This means Microsoft has failed, again, to support Linux, which makes it really odd they keep claiming they care, deeply. Even if I wanted to use

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[ukoda]

Screen sharing works on my Mint system, but it only shares the whole screen, not just a window. Not much use in many cases as tries to force my 55" 4K screen on to someones small 1080 laptop screen. Even Firefox with Google Meetings can get this right, but Microsoft have always half-arsed Linux support.

Still it is on brand for Microsoft. Their Teams app is useless on Linux, the first time I used was 4 years ago and no matter what I do, app or web browser, if I try to log in it thinks I am an employee

You can port out your Skype Number!

[benedictaddis]

Just recently I happened to get a great tip - under both EU and UK legislation you are entitled to port out your number to another VoIP provider. Many do not charge a monthly fee

Lost a customer

[bubblyceiling]

Skype credit worked really well for me for the infrequent international call. Without that there is no reason for me to use Skype at all

recommendations?

[cybotron3000]

I ended up using Skype for teaching as, unlike Zoom, it doesnt cut you off after 45mins and unlike Facetime its cross platform - quality is decent (crap though that its not p2p/encrypted). Problem is, sound card output/screen share mixed with voice doesnt work from MacOS->Windows. I tried HopToDesk the other day, but the other end (Windows) could only see about a third of my screen for some reason. Ive been using a loopback workaround, but it snarls up my machine. Id use something FOSS in a shot (though

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[ukoda]

Stay away from Teams, it is a steaming turd for Linux users. Try Signal, not sure it it has all the features you need but they have the right attitude to users and is now my preferred messaging app.

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[cybotron3000]

yeah - would much rather not use Teams (also noticed that Microsoft Remote Desktop has been improved [in inverted commas - still cant work out how to do quote marks on Slashdot] supposedly for MacOS and now has been replaced with some sorta hellscape half-arsed crud).
Ill look into Signal - didnt sign up before as wasnt massively keen on handing over phone number/contacts etc but again and again I see it listed as the best option for encrypted comms.
If it is capable of screenshare w audio thatd be magic.. (.

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[unrtst]

Have you considered Jitsi Meet?
* Open source
* Mobile apps or browser based
* audio, video, and screen sharing
* end-to-end encryption
* free public use server (up to 100 participants), and free server software if you want to run your own

FWIW, I've only heard good things. Haven't really used it myself (work uses MS Teams already; friends spread across a variety of messaging apps).
Site: https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/ [jitsi.org]
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Public Server: https://meet.jit.si/ [meet.jit.si]

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[BeaverCleaver]

I used to use Jitsi Meet at least weekly. It was really neat, worked great under Firefox on Linux, and you could make a group meeting just by sharing a link. Then a few months ago, they started demanding a login. That would have been fine, I'm happy to sign up for a useful service, but they ONLY accepted third-party logins like Facebook - you couldn't just make a "Jitsi account." The POINT of using Jitsi Meet was to get away from the behemoths like Facebook. Haven't used it since, but I would happily go bac

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[cybotron3000]

hmmm - yeah in an ideal world I wouldnt touch anything M$/Google and especially Facebork with a large bargepole, but hoping that they dont log stuff with them (need to read their terms - Ive only some crappy shared hosting for a website, but not a dedicated server that Im guessing Id need to self-host it on at the mo) - thanks for the info anyhow! :)

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[unrtst]

FWIW, you can get a server spun up very quickly in Azure, and it costs about USD$75/month: https://azuremarketplace.micro... [microsoft.com]
You may be able to find cheaper setups. I certainly found more expensive ones :-) Like this one that is "secured and supported by Hossted", but is $141/mo: https://azuremarketplace.micro... [microsoft.com]

You should be able to do it for half that if you build the VM yourself (the above process uses a cloud app that charges $0.05/hour on top of infrastructure cost). Ex: https://blog.consideritman.com.. [consideritman.com]

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[unrtst]

Thanks for the heads up on the login requirement! FYI to anyone else reading along, the login only comes up after you go to start the meeting. It allows:
* Sign in with Google
* Sign in with Facebook
* Sign in with Github

I'm 99% sure the login is not required if you setup your own server. They likely had to add it because they're offering a free service and need to avoid abuse of service, and it's a lot easier to foist the authentication to a 3rd party than maintain your own.

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[cybotron3000]

Thanks unrtst - Jitsi looks like a really great suggestion - definitely gonna give it a try - much appreciated! (Slashdot FTW! :)

Skype used to be great

[Tony Isaac]

But then MS stopped maintaining it. Also, people's preferences changed. Few people want a dozen open chat windows these days.

Skype's Downfall

[SmaryJerry]

It went from the most popular and recognized communication platform on PC to completely unused. First, discord ate it's lunch by allowing you to communicate with strangers without leaking your IP address like Skype. Then it didn't become a mobile app, like Whatsapp, Line, and Messenger. Then Skype never adopted the ease of use of Zoom where you just send a family member a link and they click it and are on (like Teams almost does). Skype should be sunset altogether. It has no practical use greater than Teams

So then

[ukoda]

So then, does this mean when my credit runs out no more nagging every 6 months to use the credit. It seemed silly to me to have to make a 2 second phone call to myself just to stop them stealing my credit.

Honestly I wouldn't miss Skype as I only use it to communicate with one person once a week. Hopefully they will migrate to Signal one day.

The only good thing about Skype theses days is it is now so unpopular that most scammers have stop using for their annoying scam attempts.

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[BeaverCleaver]

So then, does this mean when my credit runs out no more nagging every 6 months to use the credit. It seemed silly to me to have to make a 2 second phone call to myself just to stop them stealing my credit.

That's when I stopped using skype. There was no reason for that credit to expire.

Hopefully this will drive people to Linphone et al

[psychonaut]

Hopefully this move will drive people (back) to SIP and free-software clients like Linphone. Last I checked (admittedly a few years ago) you could still buy credit for by-the-minute calling from a variety of VOIP providers, and the cost was comparable to what Skype was charging.