First, Skype 3.0 for Windows now officially launched, I haven't used the beta and haven't installed 3.0 yet, so I can't comment but I'll try to play with it this week.
The other big announcement was the end of free calls within North America, Skype has introduced a plan for unlimited calls for all of 2007for a one time fee of $14.95 (until Jan 31st, after then the fee rises to $29.95). It will be interesting to see if people are willing to pay to use Skype, or if this serves as a boon to alternative systems such as Gizmo.
I don't plan to sign up, I rarely make calls via Skype to the PSTN. And given that I already get unlimited local/long distance calling in North America via my residential VOIP service (Verizon VoiceWing) I just don't see the value in the service. Now if I spent a great deal of time outside the office making calls from hotel rooms I could possibly make an argument to buy the service...but then again, as Andy Abramson notes, can one really count on hotel Internet services being capable of supporting VOIP??
And if I'm in a hotel and want cheap calls, why not just use JahJah to make free calls from my mobile phone (in-bound calls are free on my plan). For me, the real benefit of using Skype is to communicate with other Skype users, not as a replacement for my other phone services.
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