The mother of all free call offers: from Skype and Intel

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 01 May 2007 02:16

Your IT - Home IT

Skype and Intel are trying to keep the PC as the main device for voice and video calling over the Internet: by offering Skype users in the US and Canada unlimited free calls to any fixed or mobile number in the world on Mother's Day.

Intel is sponsoring the initiative which the two companies say aims to "advance a shared vision of establishing the personal computer as a central and reliable platform for voice and video calling over the Internet."

The initiative could prove quite costly in hard cash: Skype will have to pay call termination rates, generally charged by time, to the carrier terminating each and every call. These calls would normally be charged y Skype to callers at prices starting at $0.021 per minute, and Mothers Day is traditionally the busiest day of the year for telephone calling in the US.

Intel is betting quite heavily on the success of Skype. It says that the promotion is a way to demonstrate how audio and video calling are optimised when using PCs powered by the Intel Core 2 Duo processor, as a result of collaborative efforts between Intel and Skype engineers.


Gregory Bryant, vice president and general manager of Intel's Digital Office Platform Division, said: "This initiative builds upon our existing efforts with Skype to deliver an enhanced Voice over IP experience. We have optimised the processor and chipset - supporting wide-band high definition audio, for instance - and Skype users have a rich calling experience on their PCs as a result."