Skype is announcing that calls from Skype to a landline or mobile phone in the U.S. or Canada are now free, through the end of the year.
The Skype user must be in the U.S. or Canada at the time of the call (it doesn’t matter where your Skype account is set up), and the outbound call must be to a U.S. or Canadian POTS or mobile phone. Skype calls to U.S. numbers are currently priced at $0.02 per minute.
There are lots of other ways to make free calls in the U.S., but none that have no set monthly fee (Vonage has plans at $15/$25 per month, for example). This won’t help people overseas who are using Skype calling into the U.S., but it’s great to see calling fees disappear, one step at a time.