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March 16, 2005
SkypeIn!!
Skype have just added some very cool functionality to their little VoIP machinery.
What they did previously was to allow you call any normal number in the world for just the price of a local call. A friend of mine in Moscow uses ths all the time and after a couple of months still hadnt used up the €25 I had put into his account for him (the site wouldnt accept his credit card - he's Irish and living in Russia, I guess they thought he was a pirate or somesuch....aaarrrr!)
Land lines are great, even in these days when mobile phones have made the dream of being contactable everywhere at every time a reality (do I smell a whiff od sarcasm here?). Land lines have a different modality of operation - with a land line you sit down and have a long chat to your family and friends, it's like visitng without travelling. Mobile phones often dont encourage that.
What Skype has now done is to make it possible for you to effectively have a land-line number that follows you wherever you go. You can rent a number with Skype that is local to a specific area, say London, Paris, Hong Kong, New York wherever. When people phone that number from the local area they will get patched through to you for the price of a local call. So what? you say. Well, you can be anywhere. Also your friends in Paris can ring your local number there and get patched through to you, also wherever you are for the price of a local call.
Nifty.
When we have a version of Skype for those PDA cum Mobile phone things and broadband access for mobile devices is widespread and cheap then I can see the death of a few telephone companies. Or maybe, wait, legislation? Surely they wouldn't...
Posted by dottie at March 16, 2005 9:41 AM