Following the Mood Messages of a Skype employee in my Skype Conversations window I came across this last Friday: “brand new version of Skype To Go available. Dead simple to use, nothing to download, call directly from your contact list !” Curious, I went to my Skype To Go subscription where I found all six of my Skype To Go contacts had suddenly, and spontaneously, sprouted individual 647 numbers (647 being the overlay area code for Toronto’s legacy 416 area code).

Previously I had a single Toronto-based Skype To Go number which I would call to access one of my six contacts by selecting a number between “1” and “6” when I called the number. This process, using a Bluetooth connection between my BlackBerry and car audio system,  meant my “hands free” calling to this number in my car required that I actually use the keypad on my car’s “phone” panel. The new Skype To Go resolves this issue and more.

Here’s what’s new:

• Up to nine Skype To Go contacts can be designated; each with an individual Skype To Go number
• Up to five of your mobile or landline phones can be registered as valid phones to use these numbers
• When calling from a registered phone to one of the nine contacts, there is no need to wait for any voice prompts; the connection is now immediately made.
• Validated with a PIN and entering one of the registered phones’ numbers, one can call these numbers from any other phone.
• You register also the Country and Area Code you are calling from. When you move to another Country you can change the registered Country and get new local phones numbers for each of your Skype To Go contacts. But when you return to your “home” country you will get back your original Skype To Go numbers.
• The listing also shows what your charges are to these numbers below the destination number.
• You can select which of the registered numbers you want to display as your callerID when making these calls.
• What’s not changed? Your old Skype To Go number which you can still use for calling numbers not included in your Skype To Go contact list.

Skype To Go numbers can be obtained in 23 countries (note that Canada was added earlier this year):

So what’s the cost?

• If the number called is on one of your Skype subscription plans, there is no charge to landlines and mobiles in the eight countries with totally unlimited calling; for the 33 countries with unlimited calling to landlines only you pay the going Skype calling rate for calls to mobile phones (for instance, $0.317 per minute to mobile numbers in Spain). Note that Skype’s fair usage policy applies.
  
• If not on a subscription you pay, via Skype credits, the normal SkypeOut charges plus a connection fee.

Bottom line: I can now make totally hands free calls to these nine “most frequent” contacts using Skype To Go from my car via my BlackBerry or iPhone simply by pressing the “Enter” button on my steering wheel and saying “Call [Name] Other”. To simplify this process I have recorded these Skype To Go numbers under “Other” in my smartphone and Outlook address books. Back to total compliance with Ontario law regarding use of mobile phones while driving.

The bonus: I added my wife’s BlackBerry as a registered phone and she gets to call three relatives in another Canadian city at no cost when calling from Toronto’s rather large local calling area, encompassing four area codes. (With 90% of  its population spread out across a belt 100 miles wide and 4,000 miles long, Canada still has long distance charges, although they are gradually evaporating into carrier calling plans at low or no cost.)

Yesterday Skype introduced new subscription or calling plan options that provide more flexibility in terms of matching a subscription option to an individual user’s specific needs. In summary:

Ongoing Plans

The previous local country, regional and worldwide calling plans remain in place with three two changes that I have encountered:

• some price increases: for instance, while “Unlimited US and Canada” remains unchanged, “Unlimited North America” and “Unlimited World” have gone up by $1.00/€1.00 per month
• acknowledgment that the Canadian dollar is now close to or at par with the U.S. dollar
  • effectively a cost reduction for C$-denominated purchases
  • in the example below C$=US$ when changing currency
• continuation of the 15% discount for a 12-month subscription
  • not changed; discount applied during the purchase process
  • also 5% discount for a 3-month subscription

New Plans

The new plans offer three new options that have the potential to reduce calling costs for specific user segments:

• select an individual (termination) country from over 170 countries (would be useful for Canadians with family ties back to one specific country outside North America, such as India, Italy or Argentina)
• time caps (for example calling to Spain offers 60, 120, 400 minutes or unlimited per month) that provide reductions from the ad hoc pay-per-minute rates using Skype credits
• addition of time-capped mobile phone subscriptions for individual “caller pays”countries (again with a reduction from the pay-per-minute rates)

Bottom line:

• There are $1.00 or €1.00 increases for some of the previous calling plans
• Choices to be made by the individual:
  • What country(ies) or regions do I want to call?
  • Do I want a “time cap” or unlimited calling?
  • Do I want to call landlines only  or “landlines and mobile”
• When my Unlimited World is renewed later this month:
  • $12 per year increase in basic 12-month cost
  • $23 increase with loss of 15% discount (no change discount applied during purchase process)
    
  • $20 saving due to exchange rate fluctuations
  • it’s still a bargain relative to legacy PSTN long distance charges for calls outside North America

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Full disclosure: This post was prepared prior to today’s press conference using information that was publicly available prior to the conference. In the second post I’ll discuss the service as announced at CES today.

When you can advertise “Free phone calling internationally”, they will come! In the CES interview with Skype CEO Josh Silverman, Josh makes the point about how Skype draws in customers by offering a free service that is easily adopted by consumers and then offering “premium” services, such as SkypeOut calling, to generate revenues. This model has led to:

• over 580MM registered Skype accounts (probably 100MM are currently active)
• over 12% of international long distance calling minutes are Skype-to-Skype calls
• and revenues approaching $1B per year.

As mentioned in the recent CES interview with Russ Shaw, Skype’s VP & GM for Mobile and EMEA, Skype’s partnership with Hutcheson Whampoa’s 3 service in nine countries has delivered interesting carrier-friendly results from 3’s customers who take advantage of its free Skype-to-Skype calling:

• 20% higher margin
• 17% additional traditional voice minutes
• lower churn rate
• high ARPU (average revenue per user)
• over 1 billion Skype-to-Skype minutes delivered in the UK since Nov. 2007

Results that should get all wireless carriers’ attention! And Russ did emphasize these results to reinforce where some of Skype for Mobile’s current activities and resources are being directed.

Setting the stage in the U.S. market for today’s Skype-Verizon announcement:

• Verizon has a reputation as offering the best high speed (3G and faster) wireless data services within the U.S. and nobody’s complaining about their voice quality.
• AT&T’s major strength appears to be its iPhone arrangements
• AT&T’s network performance issues, especially with their data service, are well documented (even their voice channel failed me on my last two trips to the U.S.)
• The major failing of the iPhone that impacts Skype for iPhone is its lack of multi-tasking capability
• Skype has announced they will be making available Skype for iPhone running over 3G – a service that will only be available on AT&T for the duration of the current Apple-AT&T agreement
• Verizon needs an offering and drawing card that will compete with AT&T’s forthcoming ability to offer a Skype-based service on the iPhone.

So it should come as no surprise that Verizon is announcing an agreement to offer Skype on several devices including the BlackBerry line and the Android phones they support.

The Service Architecture

Based on information that has come out over the weekend and content archived on this weblog, this service is modeled on an architecture similar to the iSkoot architecture used for 3’s service whereby data (Skype chat messages, presence and call signaling information) go over Verizon’s data channel but the actual voice calls are connected to the phone via Verizon’s (robust and readily scalable) voice channel. As a result:

• Call quality is limited by the (3.7KHz) audio bandwidth of the voice channel (in particular, no SILK superwideband quality calls)
• Verizon has no termination charges for calls to Skype contacts (or what amounts to being a Skype-to-Skype call – a key factor in making this service cost effective from the Verizon perspective)
• There is no loading of Verizon’s wireless data network (and the associated backhaul demands) with the heavy demand that would be placed on it via a true VoIP client.
• The resulting “Skype for Verizon” Skype Lite client on the BlackBerry and Android devices  has no support of calls via WiFi access points.

So the Verizon-Skype announcement certainly builds on previous Skype technology and business model experience; it will take advantage of proven and demonstrably reliable carrier voice and data services. I’ll have more in the follow-up post covering the actual announcement.

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Over the past eighteen months I have often reported on iotum’s Calliflower voice conferencing service as it has evolved and matured. For the first time in a few months I had occasion to use it once again yesterday evening. Connecting  11 participants in the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto triangle, New York and Virginia, I can report on an excellent quality, two hour and ten minute call with no interruptions where everyone was clearly understood. (Even the dogs co-operated by not barking in the background although someone’s cell phone did ring at one point.) And it’s archived for access by all members of the group, including those who could not participate in the call.

However, not only has the overall consistency of call quality improved but calls hosted by a Premium Service subscriber ($50/month for two organizers, unlimited calling and participants) can now be accessed “locally” from over 100 cities in 30 countries:

Calliflower flat-rate conferencing services are now available in Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

If there was one improvement that could be made it would be to make it more obvious on the invitation emails that a participant should RSVP whether they will/may/will not attend. As demonstrated with recent enhancements to Tungle, the meeting scheduling service, invitation emails must clearly explain all the steps to be taken to respond to the invitation appropriately. In my case yesterday, I was sending invitation emails to “newbies” unfamiliar with the service; some did not know how to respond. As a result I had to send separate emails to non-responding participants to ensure they knew how to access the service.  The issue has been reported to iotum personnel who now have this issue as a “ToDo” item on their action list.

And how much of a value is this service? Ten years ago, using Bell Canada conferencing service, the 11-party call I mentioned in the introduction would have cost $787.00 with additional minutes at a cost of $0.55 per minute per participant just for the voice service. How business models change! But with Calliflower you can also see who is on the call, manage participation through muting and hand raising, share documents, augment the conversation through a chat window and record/archive the call.

Bottom line: with a rewording of their email invitations, Calliflower certainly delivers on its offering of unlimited calling from over 100 cities worldwide along with tools that enhance the conversation. During last night’s call, Calliflower went into the background and was transparent to the discussion; we accomplished our meeting agenda and objectives uninterrupted by the technology.

Overlooked: Calliflower conference calls can also be scheduled, accessed and moderated via their iPhone application.

Click here for more details about the Calliflower service

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Two weeks ago, in a post “Skype Modifies Fair Usage Policy”, I listed the modified terms and caps on usage for a Skype Calling Plan subscription, comprising both daily and monthly caps. But how do you know where you stand at any given point in time?

“UberOverLord” Don Kennedy’s Subscription Monitor for Skype is a stand alone client that can give you real time information including how many numbers you have called in a day (max = 50), how many minutes of SkypeOut calling you have spent in a day (max = 360) and how many minutes you have spent on SkypeOut calls in the current month (max = 10,000).

At his website “SaveOnPhoneServices.com” Don gives a lengthy detailed description including who needs a subscription monitor:

Your Skype call history stored on your Windows system ONLY reflects the calls you made on that individual Windows system.

Example: If you use Skype on more than one computer, in your home, at work, at friends homes, you can’t get the total call history from those systems, if you have used more than one system during that day or that month.

If you use call transfer, you cannot get any information on the length of any transferred call, even from the system that transferred the call.

Of course you can go view your call history by logging on at the Skype web site and viewing your call history, but you had better have a pen and paper, and a good calculator, because:

Both Daily and Monthly Subscription Limits are based on GMT 0. Meaning, for example, If you live in Saint Paul, MN, where it is GMT -6 hours, the old day ends and the new day starts at 18:00 or 06:00PM

Those video display icons to the right of each number are green/yellow/red when you are <90%, hit 95% and exceed 96% respectively. You can download it here. A nifty utility for those who are spending a fair bit of time making SkypeOut calls, whether for personal or business use.

Update: Daily totals are reset at midnight GMT=0; as a result Don has added a line that indicates the local time at which your daily totals are reset as shown at the left. (With the Daylight Saving time change last night I am in GMT-4.)

When Skype’s Unlimited Calling Plans were modified last May, the only “Fair Usage” limitation was 10,000 minutes per month on any of the plans. Recently my attention was drawn to a modified Fair Usage policy. Primarily it would appear that the new Fair Usage policy would apply to businesses using SkypeOut for customer service and customer acquisition activities.

The new policy adds:

• calling to a maximum of 50 numbers per day
• maximum six (6) hours of SkypeOut calling per day
• each subscription is to be used by one person only and not to be shared with any other user (whether by a PBX, call center, computer or any other means).

On considering these further:

• a user can make repeated calls to a single number without impacting the “50 numbers per day” limitation
• each employee using call center or PBX services, such as OnState’s Call Center or Virtual PBX requires a separate Skype calling plan subscription for outbound calling
• the six hour per day limitation could build up quickly on a Skype multi-party call with multiple participants connected via SkypeOut
• these limitations only impact Skype services where third party termination charges are involved – all Skype-to-Skype calling remains free
• they would not appear to affect services such as Skype Trunking via a Vosky Exchange where they talk only about “call Skype users for free” and “low cost SkypeOut rates as low as 2.2 cents per minute to most landlines worldwide”

Upon exceeding any of these limits, normal SkypeOut rates and connection fees will apply for additional minutes, Of course this requires that you have Skype credits available; otherwise you may find a call cut off in the middle of a heavy conversation.

Two observations:

• When business is generating revenue or providing support via Skype’s outbound services, one should expect some cost. Skype continues to provide competitive rates for reliable, robust business calling.
• New Skype management is obviously reviewing all its business activities with a view to ensuring that consumer users can continue to benefit from the low cost of services available via Skype Calling Plans while those who are incurring heavy termination fees (and other costs) will support the cost of such usage levels.

Hat tip to participants in the Skype 4.x Discussion Public Chat for bringing this to my attention.

Update: UberOverLord developer Don Kennedy has published “Subscription Monitor for Skype” to track your Skype subscription usage in real time.

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Having spent three days with Nokia personnel based in Finland, my need to make calls to Finland on my Skype Unlimited World subscription has just increased. And with all the technology development going on in Israel (for instance, iSkoot’s and Fring’s developers are based in Israel), Israel becomes another high demand country for inclusion in Skype’s various Unlimited subscription offers.

Today Skype announced the addition of Finland and Israel to their Unlimited subscription offerings. For instance they are now included at no additional charge to the various Skype Unlimited World, Unlimited Europe (20 countries with Finland as the only addition), etc. subscriptions. Finland and Israel are also included in the 36 countries for which you can obtain an Unlimited Country subscription. (Mexico remains a 37th country special case.)

Additionally, administrators of Skype Business Control Panels can now purchase Skype Unlimited subscriptions for any employees, business colleagues and others whose Skype activity they administer.

With the ongoing 10,000 minute per month fair usage cap, I guess I’ll have to reduce my time spent making calls to Chile and Estonia via SkypeOut. (10,000 minutes/month represents about five and a half hours/day.)

(Note: Links in this post will probably go to the pages for Canadian users; simply change your pages via the “change region” drop down box on the leading Skype subscription page for each region.)

Tags: Skype, Skype Unlimited, Finland, Israel, iSkoot, Fring, Skype Business Control Panel

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