In what is sure to be a welcome move and help generate even wider penetration in North America, Skype has announced today that all SkypeOut calls within the U.S and Canada will be free for the rest of the year. View it as a sign that the competition is really heating up in the consumer VoIP realm - it will be interesting to see if some of Skype’s competitors follow suit. This news follows on the heels of last week’s release of a new beta version of Skype that adds even more features and functionality to Skype’s voice and video calling options, including: SMS; simplified dialing; payments in Skype; Outlook contact integration; call quality management; simplified registration; shared contact groups; and improved conference calling. No one can accuse Skype of sitting still in this competitive landscape.
How come they just charged me regular rates for a (from canada to landline canada) call? Maybe someone in billing was speaking to someone in marketing. Jodi
I am just waiting now for someone to write a plugin to use the Skype APIs to re-reroute calls from Non-US IPs. Should be pretty simple.
Imagine calling your skype buddy 'FreeUSCalling' and at the tone entering the number you want to call. Sweet, now internationals can take advantage of this too!!