Quoting "James G. Sack (jim)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
This is a year old, but may still be of interest, unless someone can maybe discover some sour grapes or personal motive..
The one thing that leaps right out to me (which seems to be the whole point) is this:
"All was well until January 26, 2007 when Skype quietly slipped a massive price increase in to the mix: for those who use SkypeOut, a new rate element, a connection fee of 3.9cents (which could be US cents or Eurocents depending upon your currency) per call was added without any notice to customers - in violation of Skype's own terms of service! Consider that Skype's global out-rate was 2.1 cents per minute - so a call of 1 minute or less went from 2.1 cents to 6.0 cents, an increase of almost 300%!"
Now I know really nothing about any of this (I barely even know skype aside from seeing my nephew play with it to video chat with my dad).. but to focus on that 1st minute's increase so much, while technically true, seems to be kind of harsh.
Products like skype, at the current time, seem to me to be (and I could be totally wrong here) mostly for computer to computer talking, or for doing long distance to a "real" phone because long distance from your POTS line is way more expensive. In the vast majority of such cases, you would expect most calls to be much longer then a minute, where that added connection cost will drop in it's effect. At least I've not seen Skype pushed as a complete replacement for a POTS line, like Vonage or cable co's digital phone services have been.
I'm also willing to bet that the main reason for that connection fee is likely due to phone companies raising the rates that skype was paying for switching those calls onto their networks.. because things like Voip scare them and they'll do whatever they can to kill it or at least try to keep it from being more affordable.
I mean, the guy does have a valid point in general, but even a lot of pre-pay cellphone companies charge connection fees. If you don't like it, go to an alternative.. which is his conclusion anyway. :)
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