SkypeOut pricing and voice quality - Part 4 (getting tired of waiting for Skype's reply)

Tony Austin
Tuesday, 28 October 2008 09:05

Opinion and Analysis

SkypeOut enables you to make inexpensive voice calls from your PC to the switched telephone network, to destinations anywhere in the world. Here's another update on call quality and pricing plans.

Earlier (in SkypeOut voice quality - Part 1 and SkypeOut voice quality - Part 2 and SkypeOut voice quality - Part 3) I gave my impressions of the reliability and clarity of voice calls made from one's PC to the PSTN (public switched telephone network) using SkypeOut.

And in 1300 reasons to avoid Skype Pro in Australia I expressed my concern about the complete lack of a definition on the Skype web site concerning what they mean by the term "landline." Please review these articles before reading on.

Specifically, I discussed how calling some Australian numbers — those with "13" and "1300" prefixes that we Aussies regard as calls at local landline fixed rates (typically AU 25 to 30 cents, or thereabouts) —  can quickly, in a mere ten minutes or so,  finish up costing you more than your entire monthly SkypeOut subscription does.

But before getting stuck into pricing again, let me first continue my informal observations about SkypeOut voice quality. My conclusion is the same as last time: nearly every SkypeOut call that I've made has been of excellent clarity and reliability.

Skype are still monitoring via regular Call Quality Feedback surveys displayed after every five or ten calls upon hanging up.

SkypeOut call quality, to Australian or overseas destinations, for me remains consistently very good. And even on the odd occasion when it wasn't extremely good, I suspect that the fault could have been outside Skype's domain of control (for example, in the other party's handset or bluetooth headset).

However "your mileage may vary" as the saying goes. I'm in metropolitan Melbourne and my Internet connection is via Telstra's BigPond Cable Extreme, nominally running at up to 30 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream.

If your connection is a lot slower slower, or for other networking reasons (congestion, high latency, and so on), SkypeOut may not work as consistently well for you.

TIP: Ensure that you're using a good enough headset at your end. It doesn't have to be an expensive one. For example, purely based on personal use over several years I can recommend in terms of lightness and sound quality the Verbatim 41802 Deluxe, with volume control and microphone mute switch (under AU $30 at DSE, with mini-plugs for microphone/stereo speakers), or there's the Verbatim 41921 (about AU $40 at DSE, plugs into USB port and doesn't need or use a sound card in the PC).

PLEASE READ ON ...