Skype for 3G -or- How to Keep Calls From Being Free

June 4, 2010 - By Phineas Delgado

It’s a red letter day for anyone who owns an iPhone and has been itching to use Skype over AT&T’s 3g service, rather than over Wi-Fi. The latest version (2.0) of Skype for the iPhone will at last let you do just that. And yes, it means what you think it means. Since Skype is a free service, accessing it over 3G means you can call other Skype users for free, saving your precious cellular minutes (and making AT&T’s already flexible minute plan, which includes rollover, even more flexible… like Romanian gymnast flexible).

But wait! As if reading the collective minds of their customers, both Skype and AT&T have made announcements that will ensure that customers never get a chance to save that money. I mean it took Federal muscle to get AT&T to even allow Skype calls at all, even over Wi-Fi; they feared that it would eat into their profits on rate plans. But now, with the new version, you can by-pass the AT&T voice network completely, giving user access to calls when perhaps that didn’t have it before (i.e. because of poor reception or coverage). Additionally, Skype offers “Skype-to-phone” calling WORLDWIDE for about 2 cents a minute, meaning that a Skype user could lower their minute plan to the minimum and still have a viable communication device.

So why the sudden change of heart from AT&T, you ask? Perhaps it has something to do with Skype’s own recent announcement that free Skype-to-Skype calling (one of the major reasons people wanted Skype in the first place) would be going away, and sooner than most would like. According to them, free calls will only continue until the end of 2010, after which they would charge a small (yet undisclosed) monthly fee. Additionally, this fee would only affect calls made over the 3G network. Wi-Fi Skype-to-Skype calling would still be free.

One has to wonder if this release had anything to do with AT&T’s recent announcement that it would be ending unlimited usage data plans in the near future (unless you are grandfathered in on a current plan), and that future plans would be limited to 200MB (for $15/month) and 2GB (for $25/month), with overage fees of $15 (for another 200MB) and $10 (for another 1GB) respectively. For heavy phone users, particularly those that planned to use Skype regularly, this can put a serious crimp in the pocketbook.  Of course, AT&T may not have even considered Skype usage as part of this plan. It’s often been noted that AT&T’s service coverage lacks in comparison to other providers, even though it’s faster. There are often complaints of slow networks and dropped calls. When asked recently about AT&T, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, noted that AT&T handles more data than any other carrier, largely due to the success and proliferation of the iPhone (and now the iPad). He stated that it was his belief that any company under the same circumstances would have has similar issues. Limiting data plans seems like an obvious solution to a growing problem, then, Skype aside.

At this point, you’re probably asking the same thing I was when I heard about this: How much data does a Skype call produce? Ben Patterson, a technology writer for Yahoo! News did some testing on his own because Skype’s number didn’t add up. He reset his data usage numbers then used Skype to call Moviefone for 10 minutes. He didn’t speak, but the Moviefone guy does tend to prattle on endlessly. At the end of the call, he noted that he had transferred about 2.2MB total in data (that’s 338K up and 1.8MB down). With those numbers, it would take nearly 1,000 minutes of Skype calls to consume ALL of your 200MB plan, however, that doesn’t take into account other data usage. For an average user would it make a difference? Probably not, but it will definitely change your plans if you wanted to have long, twice-weekly conference calls over Skype.

I think the real question is whether or not the capped data plans and the future fees will remove all of the appeal that Skype has now. Or will people continue using it anyway, despite the fees and limits. And will Leia ever realize that she laid a huge kiss on her own brother, or are we pretending that didn’t happen? … Sorry … wrong article.

Please comment and let us know what you think!