Skype- great for overseas calls

I have been using [[www.skype.com Skype]] since early June and heartily endorse it, although if you only call people in the US and have a cell phone, it's probably not practical beyond a chat gimmick. I live in Germany and it cuts my rate on calls to the US by about 60%.

I first found out about Skype (and VOIP) in a January 26, 2004 Fortune article (I think non-subscribers can only read the first part). At the time I had 30 hours a month dial-up; Germany deregulated telephones and airlines about 15 years ago, which makes those services about 10 years behind the US.

We moved in May to an area eligible for DSL, so as soon as I got it I downloaded Skype. The basic program, created by the inventors of Kazaa in an attempt to make money legally, is free- this means if you download Skype and a friend downloads Skype, you can talk to one another free of charge. It's like Instant Messenger in that way.

Skype makes money by charging you to rent a phone number that someone can call at from a land line or cell phone. This is called SkypeIn, and it costs 30 euros (~$38) annually. You can choose a phone number from most places in the developed world: the beauty of this is it makes it a local call for people from the area you choose.

I got SkypeIn, which includes voicemail, and got a Virginia number, so my family can call me for far less than the ~10 cents/min. they were paying using Costco phone cards.

So you can get calls, now how do you call a regular phone from your computer? This is called--you guessed it--SkypeOut. SkypeOut rates vary, but basically you can call anywhere in the First World (all English-speaking countries plus parts of China, Western Europe, etc.) for 1.7 euro cents/min, or approximately 2 cents a minute. This whups the 3.9 euro cents that crummy Deutsche Telekom charges me. Skype has really flourished in Europe and Asia, where cell phone calls cost the caller far more than those from a land line. It has not caught on in the US as much because of the relative cheapness of cell phones.

As for emergency services, we kept our land line; as Mark pointed out VOIP is not set up to handle 911 yet. Skype tells you to do just that when you download it. Additionally, I've never gotten a "spam call" but I'm sure somebody will figure it out pretty soon. If you add the number or Skype user ID of everyone who has your number or user ID, you'll know when someone unkown is calling you.

<b>Quality</b> is better than a cell phone, not as good as a land line.

Complaints: there are few USB phones, and most are too expensive. We used just a basic mike and speakers, but that was hard for the people we were talking to because they'd hear their own voice echoing from the speakers into the mike. I recently invested $36 for the Logitech Premium USB Headset 350 on Amazon (looks like it's now $32.79), which came with 120 minutes SkypeOut credit (which I thought was a lot of money but is only about $2.50--shows you how cheap it is). It works well but in order to hear incoming calls I have to keep it unplugged. Once the call comes in I can't figure out how to get it to switch over to the headset so I'm still using the mike for incoming calls but turning down the speaker to minimize the echo on the other end.

In conclusion: If you need to call someone overseas, or want to talk to a good friend, family member, or sweetheart for free on your computers, give Skype a try. There's a good introduction in the upper left hand corner of this page under "What is Skype?"

If I forgot anything email me or reply to this post. Skype is pretty cool!

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