Skype free calling via the Internet?

TomF

My brother sent this to me this morning. I wonder if it could be used for Internet connecting to get free of Eircom's tentacles?

COMPANIES THE AMERICAS: Skype's free calls attract masses
By Richard Waters in San Francisco
Financial Times; Mar 11, 2004

A free internet telephone service launched barely six months ago is already growing faster than internet e-mail did in its heyday, posing one of the first big challenges to the traditional telecoms industry from online voice calls.
The headlong expansion of the service, called Skype, makes it the first consumer service to succeed in attracting a mass market for calling over the internet. The potential for uncontrolled growth of free internet voice services has brought dark warnings from established telecoms companies, which still make most of their money from selling traditional voice services to consumers.
Skype has caught on faster than Hotmail, the internet e-mail service that became one of the first big success stories in online communications, according to Steve Jurvetson, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. The new internet voice service is adding 1.2m new users a month, compared with the 1m a month Hotmail added at its peak.
According to its website, Skype has drawn about 8.5m users globally - a level that Hotmail took 14 months to reach. Hotmail became the biggest provider of free internet e-mail before being sold to Microsoft in 1998. Mr Jurvetson was an early backer of Hotmail, and his firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, has also financed Skype.
For now, Skype users can only talk to each other through their PCs, limiting its market. However, the expected arrival this year of handsets that use WiFi, the short-range wireless technology, would make it easier to route calls through home computers, at least in the growing number of households with a wireless network.
Traditional telephone companies claim services such as Skype will only appeal to a small group of people and will not cause them serious damage, though many are preparing rival services.
"We'll compete head-on with any internet offer," said Verizon Communications, the largest US telecoms company, which plans to launch its own internet telephony service in the next few months.
Telecoms companies warn that a widespread shift to free internet calling could expose weaknesses in the infrastructure on which the internet runs and lead to a shortage of investment in new networks.
One concern is that a mass switch of voice calls from the telephone network to the web would overburden the communications network. Estimates at Verizon suggest the internet would start to slow once it had to carry 10m-15m simultaneous voice calls.
Skype plans to offer voice calls free but charge for services such as video-conferencing. It was set up by the founders of Kazaa, the renegade online music service that has become a target for legal action from the music industry.

Frank Grimes

Originally posted by TomF
My brother sent this to me this morning. I wonder if it could be used for Internet connecting to get free of Eircom's tentacles?

That's just an IM program like ICQ, AIM, Yahoo etc. it just allows you to talk to the other users via a mic.
You still have to get online to use it, so you'll be stuck connecting up over an Eircom owned line until there's full LLU.

sceptre

Moving to Broadband. Like Frank Grimes said, you won't be able to use it to get on the Net.

I've been looking at this over the past few days. There are a few things in the T&Cs that make me a little wary but I'll bring those up when I've more time.

MarVeL

Although if you're one of the lucky few able to sever your ties with eircom completely for net access (NTL or wireless for example) this will still work fine. Was using it the other day for a nice long chat with my brother whos on NTL.

Frank Grimes

Oh yeah, never thought of Cable/Wireless, am still waking up
I'd imagine if that program takes off in anyway it'll become a pay service though, plus the people who make are kinda infamous now for the "additional features" that come with their products.

Emboss

being using it for a few months now, not a bad little app quality is fairly good even on dial up.

http://www.snaptel.net is pretty good for cheap calls to mobiles/landlines 1 cent a minute afaik

Mutant_Fruit

Ohh aarrgh, never ring mobiles with them! Ireland -> Irish mobile = US$0.2 per minute. Thats 20 CENT a minute!

Ireland->Ireland is a mere US$0.039 per minute. Less than half a cent a minute, much better value. Just out of interest, how much cheaper is that when compared to NTL, Eircom and Esat.

suppafly

Originally posted by sceptre
I've been looking at this over the past few days. There are a few things in the T&Cs that make me a little wary but I'll bring those up when I've more time.

i used it a few times to chat to a guy in my clan from sweden and i found the quality to be really, really clear. Like clearer than a home phone. Hey sceptre, What r the dodgy things in the T & C's that u spotted?

gibo_ie

Ireland->Ireland is a mere US$0.039 per minute. Less than half a cent a minute, much better value. Just out of interest, how much cheaper is that when compared to NTL, Eircom and Esat. [/B]

Actually i think youll find that $0.039 is almost 4 cent not 1/2 cent as previously stated.

Also Skype is an excellent product, have been using it for months, even on a dialup it is quite good with almost unnoticeable lag.

AntiRip

Do ye remember 4ecalls. Lovely software & you could ring any landline worldwide for free. Now its a pay service though

Xcellor

Yeah that was undoubtedly one of these e-commerce disasters where no one stopped to think "Where are we actually getting our money from if we are giving our services away for free?"...

I doubt they make much money charging now because their prices are not competitive compared to other VOIP services...

X

Mutant_Fruit

Originally posted by gibo_ie
Actually i think youll find that $0.039 is almost 4 cent not 1/2 cent as previously stated.

Hrmm.... it looks like i can;t count. All those 0's in the price just made it look so cheap. But at least anyone else with half a brain would spot that mistake, and looks like they did.