VoIP provider Skype gets busy again adjusting its pricing strategy as it announces that it will reduce the per minute charge for international calls, and begin charging a small connection fee per call.
The new strategy is part of a larger new premium subscription plan called Skype Pro, to be introduced initially in Europe and rolled out worldwide throughout 2007.
Just late last year, Skype began offering SkypeOut for an annual fee of 29.95, allowing unlimited domestic calls to landlines and cell phones. The new Skype Pro plan will also reduce per minute international call charges, up to 65% to some countries.
Global dialing rates will be reduced to 0.017 Euro, and the connection fee is 0.039 Euro for calls to the Czech Republic (including Prague), Guam, Hungary (including Budapest), Israel (including Jerusalem), Luxembourg, Malaysia (including Kuala Lumpur), Puerto Rico and both Alaska and Hawaii in the United States. The unlimited calling plans in the U.S., Canada, and Britain do not include the connection fee for national calls.
If there’s one thing to be said about Skype, they are always looking for ways to to broaden their base, and make their product more appealing to the consumer. The drop in the per minute rate will make longer calls less expensive, and the small set up fee seems to indicate that this is the way they are being charged to connect to the land line networks.
Skype is a Peer to Peer VoiP communications network offering free in network video and voice calls, instant messaging, file transfers and conference calls. Premium services offer the ability to jump onto traditional phone networks for some of the cheapest rates in the industry.
Initially thought of as a headset type, computer soft phone, Skype has pushed to have its software imbedded into the handsets of several leading Internet phone and device manufactures, one of which being the Linksys iPhone, owned by tech giant Cisco. Altogether, there are about 150 Skype certified devices available to the consumer.
Billing themselves as the worlds largest Internet communications community, it is becoming clear that they are on their way to breaking out of the strictly peer to peer VoIP business, and into a mainstream, pure play VoIP company, offering calls worldwide at extremely low rates.
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