Skype VOIP : Computer Hardware Buyers’ Glossary

A free VOIP computer-to-computer Internet voice and video phone service. For extra charge, but still below the cost of long distance you can also call conventional land line phones. That service is called skypeout. For an extra charge, you can have a traditional phone number that follows you around the planet. That service is called skypein. It looks to your callers like a traditional land line in the USA. You can’t use it for 911 emergency service. It works with a microphone, your PC sound card and screen.

You can embed a Skype number in your HTML like this:

When the user clicks the link, it will set up a Skype call, providing the association between callto and Skype is intact.

Advantages

Very cheap, flat rate, long distance both to other Skype users and people in North America with ordinary phone service.

Disadvantages

The voice quality is pretty bad, like long distance back in the 1950s. It is a bit like someone talking down a vacuum cleaner hose.
When someone calls a regular phone with Skype, the callee hears his own voice echoing back in short bursts. This is quite distracting. It sounds as if the callee is trying to interrupt.
If the Internet is busy, there are frequent cutouts.
When the callee is talking, Skype cuts off the caller’s background sounds, so it feels to the caller like talking to dead air.

Primus
VOIP
Vonage

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