Skype: Set Your Phone Calls Free via P2P One If By Land, Two If By Cell Wayne Kawamoto
One If By Land, Two If By Cell
To talk with those who rely on landlines and cell phones, lack internet access, or don't want to use Skype, there's SkypeOut, an add-on service that lets you phone and talk long distance at local rates. Rates are based on where you call to, not on where you're calling from. And the rates are constant — they don't change on weekends or after 11:00 pm.
To use SkypeOut, you simply select an amount of credit that you wish to purchase and pay with a major credit card. After that, you can enter a phone number, hit the green phone button, and begin talking. When you run out of credits, you can purchase more.
The system offers a single rate for the 20 most popular call destinations, including Australia, many European countries, major cities in South America,
Canada, New Zealand, Russia, and the United States. At press time, the current rate for the 20 most popular call destinations was 2 US cents or 1.7 Euro Cents per minute. Other rates vary from location to location.
When using SkypeOut, the quality of the call wasn't as clear, and some calls terminated for no apparent reason. While SkypeOut offers a lower-priced and viable alternative to international phone calls, the service could be more reliable. Since you only need to purchase some credits to try it out, you can easily evaluate it to see if it meets your needs.
With Skypeln, another add-on service, you can obtain your own regular phone number. This way, if non-Skype and non-internet friends and relatives want to call you, they can dial your number, through which you receive their calls through Skype. The advantage with Skypeln is that you can set up a number that costs less for your friends and family to phone.
For example, if your family resides in Chicago and you live in Paris, France, you can create a Chicago-based phone number. When your friends call you, your Skype phone rings on the other side of world, and they only pay for making the phone call to Chicago.
The service also offers voicemail to record messages when you're busy or offline. You can also record and send voicemail messages to anyone else in the Skype world. For now, the service is still in beta and being tested. According to the company, pricing will be based on a subscription service.
Competition in the Field
Another system that offers free internet-based phone calls is FreeWorld Dialup. Since it offers a first rate system that's also free, and it allows you to make calls to other internet phone networks, it's definitely worth considering along with Skype.
It's easy to recommend Skype to all who wish to place free calls to others through the internet. And Skype's new features that allow you to call land-based and cellular phones and create local numbers are appealing and offer a lot of potential.
Requirements
Skype offers software that works in Windows, and on Macs and Linux systems. In order to use Skype for Windows software, a computer must meet the following requirements: Windows 2000 or XP, 400 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM, and 15 MB free disk space on your hard drive.
Date of Review: September 8, 2005
Pros: Make free person to person phone calls to anyone, anywhere (if they too are using Skype), easy to use software and service that doesn''t put a significant drain on your system resources, add-on services available (for a cost) that deliver voicemail capabilities and that make it possible to call non-Skype users
Cons: Those you call have to use Skype as well (unless you use the add-on SkypeOut software), add-on services carry a price tag, quality impressive but not always crystal clear, some calls were mysteriously dropped when using SkypeOut
