Get Skype calls on your mobile phone, free!

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 18 May 2006 07:36

Business IT - Technology

Melbourne-based IW Distribution is offering a product from Norwegian company IPdrum that potentially allows anyone with a PC running Skype to pick up calls to their Skype softphone from their cellphone at no charge and to make calls from their cellphone via their Skype softphone at SkypeOut rates (zero for on-net calls) rather than cellular rates.
The zero cost is achieved through cellular operators' 'family and friends' type plans which in some cases offer free calls between two phones on the family and friends plan.

One of these two phones is permanently connected to the PC via its handsfree connector, the PC's mike and headset sockets and its USB port; the other is the user's normal cellphone.

IPdrum software running on the PC routes an incoming Skype call out through the connected cellphone which then calls the user's cellphone.  To make calls from their cellphone, via Skype, users dial the number of the PC-connected cellphone and then use predefined short codes to identify the person they want to call.

The IPdrum software presently supports Windows XP and the connector only older style  Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. It retails for $129.00

IW Distribution director, Daryl Chambers, described the present product as primarily a "proof of concept" offering, saying that future versions would incorporate the necessary cellphone functionality into the hardware.