Skype has announced free calls to any US or Canadian landline number! They say that the free program will run until at least the end of 2006. (The date of the announcement is 15 May, 2006.)
Amazing. Free calls from anywhere in the world to any landline phone number in the US and/or Canada!
If you're not familiar with Skype, it is an amazing internet telephone service. The software is free, and with it you can make calls from your computer to other Skype equipped computers or to any real telephone number in the world.
Calls from your PC to any other Skype PC are free. No matter where in the world they are located; the call is free. Nice.
There are two other options that are not exactly free but are very, very inexpensive. One is "SkypeOut" where you can call out from the Skype network to any "real" phone in the world. In that case you pay only the local calling rate for the country in which the number you're calling is located. The other optional service is "SkypeIn". In this case you get a phone number complete with country code and area code, and with it any real phone can call your Skype account on your PC. (It's a neat idea -- honest.)
Until May 15, the rate for calling out to numbers in the US and Canada was two-cents per minute. Amazingly low, yes; but not free. Now it's free at least through the end of 2006.
I've tried Skype a few times recently and have to say that it is pretty fantastic. For most calls you just wouldn't know the difference if it weren't for the equipment involved.
My brother and his wife just completed a four month trip around the world and called several times using Skype. He had it on a handheld iPAQ running Windows with an earphone and the built-in microphone. He made the calls from internet cafes and hotel lobbies -- wherever he could find free WiFi. More than once I had to ask if he was on Skype because the call was so clear and undistorted I just didn't think that it was actually Skype. It was.
To call my landline number he had to arrange an outbound "SkypeOut" account with Skype. That let him make calls out from Skype to regular landline phone numbers. To get the free service you still have to set up a SkypeOut account, but the calls in the US and Canada are free! At least for the rest of 2006.
Very, very cool!
Here's the gist of it: You can call ordinary phones anywhere in the world from your computer for the price of a local call with SkypeOut but, for now at least, you can call any regular phone in the US for free!
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