SkypeOut pricing and voice quality - Part 3

Tony Austin
Tuesday, 16 September 2008 09:07

Opinion and Analysis

If you examine the current table entries for SkypeOut prices to Australian destinations, you'll see the following:

Apart from various rows being reordered, the only changes are highlighted in yellow: "611300" has been added after Australia-Shared Cost, and "6113" has been added after Australia-Special Service. Oh whoopy doo!

To the average Australian I think that, as presented via this minor amendment, the text strings "611300" and "6113" would probably be a little puzzling, only after some thought being (with any luck) associated with calls made to destinations having "1300" and "13" prefixes, respectively. If the leading "61" country code was left off, I suspect that the association would be more likely. A bit of usability research is called for here!

And you'd have to take a stab at what is meant by the label "Australian Ex Territories," My guess is that this is meant to refer to be "Australian External Territories" (remote places, like Christmas Island), in which case the "Ex" should be amended to "External" I would recommend.

Now comes a basic geography lesson for Skype staff responsible for this pricing table. Firstly, it's rather bizarre that you've provided table entries for Sydney and Canberra but not for Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin and Brisbane?

It looks like you don't have a clue that the contiguous Australian mainland states and the two mainland territories (the Northern Territory plus the Australian Capital Territory, commonly referred to as Canberra) -- plus the southern island state of Tasmania all are regarded as belonging to what I might call "Australia proper" for lack of a better term.

Skypers, here then (as a no-charge IT consulting assignment) is my recommendation for immediate amendment to the Australian section the SkypeOut pricing table:

I've had no telephone industry experience, so plead ignorance about what you should display for "1900" and any other types of special services offered in Australia, which you are bound also to explain.

And what about pricing/features for other countries outside Australia, is everything sweet there?

PLEASE READ ON ...