Can iCall Take Skype’s Lunch Money?

I have used Skype forever and connect to my buddy Mark in Tanzania via Skype almost daily. Unfortunately, I have to pay SkypeIn and SkypeOut fees in order to really use the service when I want to use phone numbers and not just Peer-to-Peer calls. I like trying out new VOIP services like Gizmo but Gizmo sucks. Now there is iCall with free calls to the USA and canada, free voicemail, and unlimited inbound calling. I am going to check it out. iCall might just be able to take Skype’s lunch money.

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Comments (5)

  1. sander wrote:

    SkypeOut calls to american and canadian users ARE free for users from US or Canada :)

    Tuesday, July 4, 2006 at 3:41 pm #
  2. id wrote:

    this might be a late comment..

    Sander the option you’re referring to considering skype is valid till decembre 2006, it won’t be free anymore.As for icall, i want to try it but i’m afraid it will do the same thing as skype, and by that i mean, using people’s bandwith while you’re not using it yourself which i consider to be not fair.

    Sunday, July 23, 2006 at 3:55 pm #
  3. What do you mean by, “and by that i mean, using people’s bandwith while you’re not using it yourself which i consider to be not fair”?

    Is this along the lines of net neutrality? Getting a “free” service at the expense to the network? Or, something else?

    Monday, July 24, 2006 at 9:18 am #
  4. id wrote:

    What i’m referring to is an article in Skype’s EULA, where it mentions the possibility than any user with a good broadband connexion and a fast CPU can become a Supernode, in other words, Skype would be using the user’s bandwidth through which other users may connect. It’s better explained in here http://www.voipwiki.com/blog/?p=30 and also in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype
    As for this having anything to do with Net Neutrality, i don’t think so.

    Monday, July 24, 2006 at 2:56 pm #
  5. Cool. That is sort of like Limewire or the old days of Napster, where you could be a node or a supernode, so that Skype would become a real-time P2P truly decentralized load-balanced system… its own little internet within the internet — very cool!

    Monday, July 24, 2006 at 7:14 pm #