Phone solutions, Microsoft's acquisition of Skype and other musings

I haven't updated my blog in a very long time, due to having a lot of work, stress, etc. Today I would like to share some information about my latest home phone set up and share my comments regarding the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft and its potential implications.

A few years ago, I got rid of my U.S. Skypein number that Skype was charging me $60 a year for when I found out about IPkall.com, which offers free U.S. phone numbers that can be forwarded to SIP services. Free is cheaper than $60, of course.

With my voip adapter registered with a sip service such as nonoh.net or voipblast.net (see previous posts for screenshots) and ordinary landline phones plugged into the adapter, which is plugged into the adsl modem and requires no computer to run, my phones here in Prague ring when people call the IPkall number, which is a Seattle number that is local to most people in the U.S. This is the same functionality that Skype provides, but is free and not $60 per year.

I used to own an expensive futuristic looking set of cordless phones that had built-in Skype and could receive Skype and landline calls and did not require a computer. They had cool ring tones and were attractive. However, I stopped using Skype to make outbound calls to ordinary phone lines when I found a cheaper solution. Voipblast and Nonoh charge $0.10 per minute to call Czech mobiles and charge nothing to call landline and mobile numbers in the U.S. and Canada and to call Czech landlines, while Skype either required purchasing of a monthly subscription for an unlimited calling plan or charged 2 cents per minute to call U.S. numbers and landlines in most other countries and charged almost 20 cents per minute to call Czech mobiles. Another disadvantage of using Skype was that I could not receive calls to the expensive Skypein number on any phones other than the Skype cordless phones.

My current set up is as follows.

All of my old fashioned landline phones are plugged into the sip adapter (similar to the little boxes provided by companies like Vonage), which is configured for nonoh.net, and I hear an American dial tone when I pick up any of the phones. My Seattle IPkall number is pointed at my sip account, which makes my phones ring when people call the Seattle number. Rather than use the Czech landline number provided together with my ADSL home internet service, I am using a Czech landline number that costs only $2 per month that I purchased from flynumber.com, and it is also pointed at the sip account. There is also a digital answering machine, which I bought for one dollar last year at a thrift store in Ohio during a visit to the U.S., which is plugged into the sip adapter along with the phones and takes messages for both the IPkall U.S. number and the flynumber.com Czech number.

The only thing I really ever use Skype (on my Linux machine) for any more is IMing and occasional video calls, both of which are free. In my opinion, Skype is shooting itself in the foot by charging so much more for inbound and outbound calling services than its competitors and for not being compatible with SIP. Apparently there is now a way to configure Skype SIP settings, but Skype charges for this service, which is ridiculous. I'm curious to learn what Microsoft's acquisition of Skype will mean. I find it odd that Skype did not respond to competition by lowering its prices, but actually increased them.