Coulson Filters » Telephony

Europe gets Skype Pro

coulson — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:52:46 +0000

First Europe – next the world. Skype Pro, the latest offer from the popular VOIP & co. and another bang on the ear for traditional phone companies, was launched on Wednesday and is now available in 15 European countries. For 2 euros per month Skype Pro allows free (excluding the small connection fee) unlimited domestic calls and voicemail to landlines in these countries – UK, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Portugal and Spain.

Skypers will continue to enjoy all the standard free features : user-to-user voice and video calls, instant messaging, conference calling, and Skypecasts. “Skype Pro lets you call landlines and mobiles all over the world for exceptional value,” Telecoms vice president and general manager Stefan Oberg said. “The combination of Skype’s free features with Skype Pro is very compelling.”

via | betanews

Get yer Jajah’s out !

coulson — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 18:11:45 +0000

Jajah â€˜The Peoples Phone Companyâ€™ has been receiving a lot of attention and not just from the rumour mills â€“ talk of Apple/Jajah cooperation in an upcoming Apple phone.

The European start-up announced in December an agreement with some of the biggest media companies in Europe – Bild-T Online, News Austria and Germanyâ€™s Pro7Sat1 who are to offer Jajah services directly from their websites. This deal will give Jajah access to 110 million potential users and prime time advertising on TV, radio & newspaper.

Founded by Roman Scharf and Daniel Mattes from Austria, Jajah began offering cheap/free long-distance phone calls over the Net, in early 2005 and have built up a Free Global Calling Zone where a registered Jajah user can call another registered user for free. Zambia has just become the first African member. The company says it is making an effort to lower prices for some of the high traffic destinations like India where 1.1 billion people can now connect to the US or UK for just under 7 eurocents a minute.

via Reuters

FON WiFi router in new Skype bundle

coulson — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 23:23:37 +0000

The largest virtual phone network in the world, Skype and the largest WiFi network in the world, FON, have teamed up to jointly launch a WiFi phone that connects for free wherever you find other foneros (fon community members).
Started by maverick entrepreneur Martin Varsafsky, in November 2005, FON, the wireless services company, has come a long way since it began life in Madrid, when many critics discarded the idea of sharing broadband connections as impractical.

â€œIt all started as a simple idea. Why should you pay for Internet access on the go when you have already paid for it at home? Exactly, you shouldnâ€™t. So we decided to help create a community of people who get more out of their connection through sharingâ€ Varsafsky.

After collecting 18 million euros at the beginning of the year, from Google, Skype, Index Ventures and Sequoia Capital, FON are now having their first custom built router, available since October, bundled into a Skype WiFi phone package, which was released today.

Part of the investment deal in February meant additional board members at FON, such as Niklas ZennstrÃ¶m, founder of Skype.
“There is perhaps no more important goal for the industry than helping to make broadband Internet access available around the world, FON has a great idea to help people share WiFi with one another to build a global unified broadband network, and weâ€™re happy to lend support” ZennstrÃ¶m.

Via MobileHub

Update:The bundle is exclusively available in the U.S. and Europe, from the Skype Web store at skype.com/shop.