You can also choose a lower-priced flat-rate Skype plan that has a lower limit on minutes.
Roughly, the costs (without all the extra tiers) are $2.95 /month U.S. & Canada, $5.95 for Mexico, and $9.95 for the rest of the world.
There isn't a contract required, but if you sign up for 3- or 12-months before June 1st you'll receive a 33% discount.
In their press release, Stefan Oberg, VP & GM telecoms at Skype said:
"This move is a natural step for Skype. Skype was founded on the principle of making free voice and video calls available to people all around the world. And now we’re making it even easier for the Skype community to call their friends and family who are not yet on Skype. Our subscriptions give people an easy, hassle-free choice for how and when they want to catch up with their loved ones."
"For example if you live in London, for just €2.95 a month, you can call your grandmother in Poland, whenever you like, talk for up to six hours at a time, and not worry about how much it’s costing you. Your grandmother doesn’t need to understand the internet. You just use your Skype subscription to make the call and she just picks up the phone. And if you have friends and family spread over the world, you can reach them all for as little as €8.95 a month. When you combine the free features Skype is known for – from instant messaging to conference calling to video calls – with our subscriptions, it’s hard to find a better alternative."
Although this is obviously a plus for subscribers, analysts were critical, with Gartner analyst Steve Blood saying, "It goes to show that there's not really a market here. Every few months they have to continue to reduce prices to compete -- where's the revenue to pay back the $2.6 billion?"
Bernt Ostergaard, research director at Current Analysis said, "Skype is using the spray gun approach, offering different consumer and enterprise packages to see what works."
A somewhat desperate move in hopes of picking up some business adoption? Perhaps. Remember that recently eBay’s CEO John Donahoe told FT that eBay may consider selling Skype if it can't find ways to use the service in its core business. As eBay continues to lose patience with Skype, this could be just their first move.
Source: By Tech Ex
