Getting on to the topic of voice quality, some Skype users around the globe are reporting that there's a "trick" that can sometimes help if you find in a session that the clarity is not good. Just disconnect, and call again. Maybe even set your Skype status to "offline" for 15 seconds or so. Then place a new call, which supposedly should force a new "super node" to be allocated to you during call set-up, improving the chance that you'll finish up with a better-performing connection. It's certainly worth a try, and I've independently found it to work in some cases.

Moving on to SkypeOut -- the Skype service for PC to PSTN (public switched telephone network, or "landline") calls. I've been using SkypeOut since it first became available, and have made numerous calls of excellent quality to clients and prospects in North America and Europe (from my base in Melbourne, Australia). As newer and newer versions of Skype were released, the call quality kept getting better and better, and I have few complaints about calling these overseas destinations.

However, it's a different story for calls that I make to destinations within Australia. They turn out to be of average clarity at best, but sometimes they're quite poor (with delays and echoing). Worst of all, sometimes the calls are atrociously bad, like trying to carry out a conversation underwater!

It seems counterintuitive that calls within your own country, one with a long-established and excellent PSTN service, are consistently much worse than calls placed to locations on the other side of the world. But so it is. My own best guess is that, to save money, Skype haven't establish a good (or any) "point of presence" in Australia. This means that calls travel from Australia, make their way around the globe, and then are routed all the way back into Australia again. This, of course, will significantly increase the likelihood of a poor connection.

I am hopeful that Skype is doing something about this. Maybe they are: see VSNL to terminate SkypeOut calls where ITWire's Stuart Corner explains how Indian carrier VSNL has been selected by Skype to provide PSTN call termination for SkypeOut.

It would definitely convince me to switch across to the Skype Pro service right away, since I'd could take advantage of the "pay nothing per minute" feature to place untimed calls to any destination in Australia that were "free" (apart from the relatively small call connection fee). But unless Skype improves the voice clarity of Australia-to-Australia calls, I don't gain any real advantage from converting over from SkypeOut.

Any comments from other Australian users of SkypeOut about having similar experiences with calls to Australian destinations? What about all you SkypeOut users in other countries, placing calls to destinations inside your own country's borders? I have a suspicion that the situation might be worse in Australia, but this is just a guess on my part.

And, to put the matter straight, I'm hoping for and awaiting an authoritative response from some well-placed Skype executive or architect.  Wish me luck!

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