Free Skype for USA and Canada

Millions of Skype users in the US and Canada woke up to a very pleasant surprise Monday morning, when Skype, the eBay owned intenet telephone company, announced that all Skypeout calls placed from the skype software to all landline and cellular phones in US and Canada would be 100% free until at least the end of the year.

Previously, skype users paid a small fee - generally much lower than going long distance rates - to make Skype calls to landline and cell phones. PC to PC Skype calls have always been free.

This latest announcement has confirmed rumours of a free Skype service ever since eBay purchased Skype on September 12 of last year from Sherman Networks, creators of the KaZaA P2P sharing software.

Free Skype service for US and Canada is a very strategic move for Skype, allowing them very deep penetration into the North American Voice-over-IP (VoIP) telephone market. Letting people experience for free Skype's superior voice quality, and the added-value features such as SkypeIn, integrated voicemail, and conference calling, will allow Skype to acquire many new loyal customers, and dominate a very competative market in which they already hold a substantial piece.

Last week Skype also released a new beta version of its software that adds even more features and functionality to Skype’s voice and video calling options, including: SMS; simplified dialing; payments in Skype; Outlook contact integration; call quality management; simplified registration; shared contact groups; and improved conference calling.

On May 1, after just more than two and a half years in operation, Skype achieved 100 million registered users worldwide.