Skype to start charging U.S., Canada users for calls
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Internet phone service provider Skype plans to start charging U.S. and Canadian users US$29.95 per year for unlimited calls to regular phones in both countries, as the end of a free trial offer looms.
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EarthLink is offering free VoIP calling as an incentive to sign up for its high-speed Internet service. The free service is available to the company&#39;s million-plus broadband customers.
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A workaround has been developed that provides a round-about method of enabling iPhone users to make free calls via Skype.
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Starting in mid-October AT&amp;T, in partnership with industry-leader Linksys (a division of Cisco Systems (Quote, Chart)), will begin offering Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to home users across the country.
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AMERICA&#39;s chief communications regulator will seek broad regulatory authority for the US federal government over internet-based telephone services to avoid stifling the emerging market.
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Skype has announced its free software is now available for the Siemens Gigaset DECT cordless phones, meaning that users can now utilise a cordless phone to place calls to other telephones, over the Internet.
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Assuming you know who you're going to call Skype Pro customers can now make international calls from their mobiles or any other phone at Skype Out rates, provided they've pre-registered the numbers they want to call.â¦
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Verizon Wireless introduced an unlimited calling plan Tuesday with no roaming or long-distance fees for $99.99 a month, an offer that could spark a price war among carriers.
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UnitedGlobalCom, Europe's largest cable TV provider, said on Tuesday it would start offering telephony services to its broadband Internet customers, which would dramatically cut phone bills.
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Social networking site adds Skype service
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Skype plans to offer a business telephone service for &quot;individuals and workgroups, not CIOs&quot; that the free Internet phone service provider believes will shake-up another major telephone market.
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NEW YORK  - Are cellphone companies using their sway over handset makers to unfairly limit consumers&#39; choices? Skype, a pioneer in PC-to-PC calling, thinks so, and it wants the Federal Communications Commission to do something about it.  In a blistering filing with the FCC, Skype basically accused Verizon Wireless and other big carriers of holding their customers hostage because most cellphones sold in the USA are &quot;locked,&quot; meaning you can only use applications and features sold by your carrier.
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Voice over IP calls are getting cheaper - Vonage and AT&amp;T both announced lower monthly charges late last week. AT&amp;T said it would reduce its monthly charge by five dollars to $30 a month for unlimited local and long distance calls in Canada and the US.
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Skype has launched a package for small businesses that bundles up the company's software with call credits and subscriptions for multiple users.
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(InfoWorld) - Nearly one year after Skype stole the headlines at the 3GSM World Congress with itsÂ plans to offer a mobile versionÂ of its Internet phone, a couple of nimble startups -- and not the Net telephony pioneer itself -- appear to have found a way to make this type of service work, both technically and commercially. Earlier this week, JajahÂ announced aÂ new mobile VOIPÂ serviceÂ that allows smart-phone users to make low-cost and, in some cases, free international calls. Customers simply enter Jajah's mobile Web portal through their handset's browser, enter their user name and password and then make a either a free or low-cost call. The launch of Jajah Mobile Web comes on the heals of a mobile VOIP (voice over IP) offering by Fring, which, unlike Jajah, requires users to download software and install it in their Internet-enabled handsets. The Fring service gives mobile users access to P-to-P (peer-to-peer) VOIP offerings such as Skype and Google Talk. Microsoft appears to have its finger on the pulse of mobile VOIP, too. Next week in Barcelona, the U.S. software giant will unwrap aÂ new version of its Windows Mobile OSÂ that will supposedly enable carriers and device maker to add VOIP functionality to Windows Mobile devices. All these announcements -- and the many more expected at this year's 3GSM World Congress -- come as Skype, which essentially stunned the mobile phone industry last year with its VOIP plans, acknowledges technical and commercial hurdles. In a recent interview in Finnish newspaper, Skype co-founder and CEO Niklas ZennstrÃ¶m spoke of "technical obstacles" and conceded that efforts to make Skype work had been taking "much longer than expected." At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, Eric Lagier, Skype director of business development for hardware and mobile, called the lack of attractive flat-rate fees for most mobile phone services a key commercial hurdle to mobile VOIP usage. He said the company didn't want to be in a position of claiming that its service is free, but facing users who at the end of the month are docked with a huge broadband usage fee. At last year's 3GSM World Congress, Skype and the Hutchison 3 Group (Hutchison 3G)Â announced a partnershipÂ to provide what they had hoped to become the world's first commercial VOIP service for mobile phones. Hutchison 3G, which operates IP-based mobile broadband networks in several European markets, was one of the first mobile phone operators to embrace VOIP, a technology many in the industry view as a major threat to their cash-cow voice business. But industry experts admit that challenges remain.Â One hurdle in providing quality VOIP serviceÂ over mobile handsets is the uplink, which is currently too slow to support quality voice calls, John Giere, chief marketing officer at Alcatel-Lucent, said in an earlier interview. To increase uplink speeds, operators of GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) networks, which dominate Europe and many parts of Asia and Latin America, will need to upgrade their networks with HSUPA (High Speed Uplink Packet Access) technology, which will give operators "the bidirectional capability they need to run real VOIP," he said. The high-speed technology is not expected to become commercially available in volume until the latter part of 2007 or early 2008. Operators are presently busy rolling out the downlink counterpart HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access).
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China is set to introduce a caller-pays policy for its two mobile telephone operators, allowing phone users to enjoy cheaper services as early as next month, a report has said.
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The founders of Skype, an online  telephone business sold last year to eBay Inc.  for  $2.6 billion, are testing a broadband television service for  computer screens, the founders' spokesman said on Monday.