Skype set to launch Skype Pro service

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Skype is set to launch a new version of its VoIP phone service for international customers in 24 countries. The new service, named Skype Pro, won't charge by the minute for its SkypeOut service, which lets computers call landlines. Instead, it will charge users a €2-per-month subscription fee and €3.9 cents-per-call connection fee.

There are some benefits to the new system over the old one: specifically, free Skype voicemail (which used to cost about $20 a year) and a large discount on a SkypeIn number at which regular phones can call you. All in all, it's a pretty good deal.

In the United States, we've been spoiled with relatively cheap, all-you-can-talk VoIP plans from Vonage and Comcast Digital Voice. In fact, Skype's latest North American effort, $15-per-year unlimited service, makes it seem like international customers are being taken for a ride. Connection fees are a thing of the past. Sooner or later Skype needs to realize that.

[hmarks]

Remember European cellphones are caller pays

It's easy from a US perspective to say connection charges are so old school. Here Cellphone users pay (or use minutes from their allocation) to both send and recieve calls. Overseas callers pay extra to call mobiles and Skype needs to recover some of that somehow

[Fil0403]

Come again?

I don't know in which country do you live, but in portugal we don't have to pay to receive calls. The only situation we have to pay to receive calls if we are abroad (like me) and you're using roaming.

[ylcorona]

Got it reversed, buddy...

Just to clear thing up on the original post: most europeans (i'm talking about italians, spanish, portugese, french and germans, probably more...) pay a per-minute charge to make phonecalls to any number, regardless of it being fixed or mobile. They don't pay to receive phonecalls unless, as the previous reader mentioned, they are outside of they're national boundries. Americans instead have calling plans which give users a certain amount of 'airtime' minutes, those are minutes that you use for either making or receiving phonecalls, to anf from any number.
Skype's announcement does make quite a difference for European users as calling cell phones from a fixed line is usually quite expensive (it varies by country and provider but in italy it is no less than 15 euro cents a minute and as high as 39 euro cents a minute). However, in my country (ITALY) Skype has a track record of making announcements way before it actually secures the rights (from our local FCC, a bueaucratic nightmare) to offer those services to the market. E.g., skype announced in late 2005 that it would start offering SkypeIn numbers for Italians and, as of today, we're still not able to purchase one. And since they haven't established a local customer service office there's no way of finding out when this will happen...

So, "Skype, interested in answering???"

[rushlllhour]

i don't know why here in america, people are being charged for phone usage or their minutes are being used whenever somebody calls them. shouldn't it be only the outgoing transactions that are supposed to be charged? i think it is only here in america that people are charged for receiving phone calls.