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Skype Pricing Creeping Up |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Thursday, 22 February 2007 |
Charging each subscriber a €2 per month service fee might seem like a strange next step for a free phone service, but the eBay-owned Skype has moved to bundle a number of what it describes as its 'favorite' add-on services into a new offering Skype Pro.
Skype Pro takes the company in something of a new direction as eBay
seeks a way to recoup the massive investment it made in the
predominantly free peer to peer voice application.
Earlier this year the company added a €0.039 cent connection fee on every call which already started to push the pricing advantage the company has over traditional non-P2P VoIP Service providers.
Now these new service bundles being introduced are designed to tempt people into spending more
with the company. Not on phone calls mind your, but in add-on product and service.
The phone
on Skype Pro are free - well not really free but we'll get to that.
With Skype Pro you can make as many calls as you like to landline telephones within you own country. The packages don't include calls to any mobile, premium, special or other
types of non-geographic numbers and you will still have to pay the €0.039 cents connection fee - adding VAT if applicable.
What you don't pay is any per
minute charge for the call. Timed Skype
calls for most countries globally are currently priced at €0.017 cents per minute. So with Skype Pro you would pay your €2 per month and €0.039 cents connection fee per call, but not the €0.017 cents per minute when you are calling in country.
We're not sure we're excited yet.
If you plan to talk for a long time this is a great deal. If not, you
might end up paying more. At €0.017 your €2 would buy you about 2 hours talk time a month anyway.
So on top of that the company is offering deep discounts on a number of
features. Best of all is probably Free Skype Voicemail for all; but there's also a €30 discount on SkypeIn
numbers, a €30 discount on a Philips VoIP 841 cordless phone or a €10
discount on an SMC Wi-Fi phone.
They are also offering cheaper access to emoticons, ringtones, avatars and the like.
With Skype Pro set to appear in Australia some time soon, it will be
interesting to see how competitively the company sets this pricing for
the local market.
In local dollars the European deal works out a little cheaper than big brand VoIP providers in Australia.
We all pay the €0.039 cents connection fee which is about A$0.065
cents plus GST taking it to over 7 cents. That's a little less than the un-timed
National calls you can buy from just about any VoIP provider in the country.
meanwhile, the two euros
translates to a less than A$4 per month service charge, which is pretty
competitive. An account from FaktorTel can be had for A$7,95 with A$0.10 cents calls to landlines.
At Engin it will cost you A$9.95, but at ISP iinet for example you 'might' be charged (some accounts are still free) A$9.95 per month service fee and a rather uncompetitive A$0.15 cents un-timed for national calls.
To tempt the punters an introductory offer is being thrown in for the
Europe launch. The minimum sign-up period is five months - €10 - but you receive €5
Skype credit.
Skype Pro will initially be available across Europe in Austria,
Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,
Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Spain and the UK.
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