On 2008-05-17, Larry <noone@home.com> wrote:
> danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote in
> news:g0l1dc$7ag$2@reader2.panix.com:
>> Just wondering... does skype interconnect to
>> the Cuban, North Korean, and PSTNs ("regular phones")
>> in the other countries the US pretends don't exist?
>
> http://skype.com/prices/callrates/
> These are rates w/o VAT (US)
> Cuba is $1.025 to phones.
> Korea Dem People's Rep $ 0.684
> Check the huge list for rates to other places, many of whom most never
> heard of. Skype is not limited by any US bureaucracy because it is not a
> US company.

If you want to phone one of these countries, however, you might be
better off using Rebtel, another European company, at $0.989 to
Cuba and $0.410 to North Korea for both mobiles and landlines
(Skype adds on an extra, gratuitous 10 or 20 cents per minute for
mobiles in these countries). Or as good is all-American Voicestick
at $0.984 to Cuba and $0.426 to North Korea, again the same for mobiles
and landlines.

In real life it takes real infrastructure like telephone switches
and transmission facilities to deliver phone calls in a country, so
in every country there are usually only a small number of players who
will service VoIP operators (in those particular countries there's
probably only one). All VoIP operators deal with the same small
set of carriers, perhaps through the same small set of wholesalers,
so all VoIP operators will have about the same connectivity. It is
also no surprise that Rebtel and Voicestick are charging about the
same amount to call countries with monopoly carriers since they're
probably being charged about the same amount by those carriers, and
both those companies seem to operate on fairly small margins.

Skype's costs are probably, if anything, lower than those other
two companies since Skype's volumes are a lot higher, but Skype
is a money-making operation and buy-low-sell-high is a good way
to make money. Charging differential rates for mobiles in countries
which don't seem to actually charge differential rates to call
mobiles is a particularly nice touch.

Skype has a few nice things on their price list, if you can stick
to those and avoid the other stuff, and Skype's free stuff is
always good if you can make use of it. Skype is not a particularly
cheap way to make overseas calls to phones, however.

Dennis Ferguson