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The Kansas City Star, Mo., David Hayes Column: Internet Phone Firm Offers Free Long-Distance Calls

Posted on: Tuesday, 16 May 2006, 12:02 CDT

By David Hayes, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

May 16--Skype, the Internet phone company now owned by eBay, is offering free long-distance calling in the U.S. and Canada for the rest of 2006.

The San Jose, Calif.-based company announced the special deal on Monday.

Skype is a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone service, similar to those offered by companies like SunRocket and Vonage.

However, unlike those services, which are designed to replace a customer's local and long-distance phone service, customers use Skype almost exclusively for long-distance calls.

Skype customers use software on their computers and headsets or special phone handsets to call any traditional landline or cell phone number in the world. They also can make calls from computer to computer to other Skype customers.

Although it isn't required, Skype works best using broadband Internet services like DSL and cable Internet, rather than standard dial-up connections.

Calls that go from computer to computer have always been free, while Skype charged a couple of cents a minute for domestic calls to a landline phone.

Henry Gomez, Skype's general manager in North America, said the company will drop even that two-cent charge in an attempt to draw more people to the service.

Skype has been seeing new competition from companies like Yahoo, Google and even Microsoft, which are beginning to offer similar services. Microsoft, for instance, is beta testing a service that allows Windows Live Messenger users to call landline or cell phones worldwide.

Skype, which has a strong consumer base overseas, will continue to charge for landline or mobile phone calls to countries outside of Canada and the U.S. Those calls generally cost two cents a minute and up, depending on the country called.

Skype contends more than 100 million registered users have downloaded the company's software worldwide.

Faster smartphones

The Treo 650, a smartphone wildly popular with mobile businesspeople, is going high speed.

Palm, manufacturer of the Treo phones, announced Monday an updated version of the PDA-phone that will run on high-speed wireless networks. The new 700p uses the Palm operating system and includes multimedia features and built-in networking capabilities to connect laptop computers to the Net.

Sprint is planning to announce today it will begin offering the 700p before the end of the month. Verizon Wireless on Monday said it also will begin offering the phone by the end of the month.

The same size as the 650, the 700p has a 320 x 320 touchscreen, a 1.3-megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity and 128 megabytes of memory, including 60 megs that can be used to store programs, photos and MP3 music files.

The Sprint phone will retail for $650. The company is planning to offer incentives and rebates cutting the price to $400.

Sprint also is offering a variety of service plans for the phone.

One of the 700p's standard features will come from another Kansas City area company, Handmark.

Handmark's Pocket Express software, which offers 14 services ranging from turn-by-turn text-based directions to news headlines, is being bundled with the phone. While the full service costs $6.95 a month, news, weather and sports information is free.

Sprint this summer also is expected to begin offering the Treo 700w, which has been exclusive to Verizon since the Christmas season. The 700w is another smartphone, but operates on the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform instead of the Palm operating system.

Garmin's stock split

Garmin Ltd. will hold a special meeting in July to ask shareholders to approve a 2-1 stock split.

The proposed split, recommended by the Garmin board, has driven the price of Garmin shares up by about 4.5 percent since it was announced May 3. Shares have traded as high as $101, up almost 15 percent.

The special meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. July 21 at Garmin's corporate headquarters in Olathe.

In addition to the special meeting, Garmin's annual stockholder meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. June 9 at the company's Olathe headquarters.

On Monday, shares of Garmin dropped $2.51, closing at $92.21.

Bits & Bytes appears on Tuesday. To reach David Hayes, senior technology writer, call (816) 234-4904 or send e-mail to dhayes@kcstar.com .

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Kansas City Star, Mo.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

Unknown:SKYPE, NASDAQ-NMS:EBAY, NASDAQ-NMS:YHOO, NASDAQ-NMS:GOOG, NASDAQ-NMS:MSFT, Unknown:VRZ, Unknown:HMARK, NYSE:VZ, NASDAQ-NMS:GRMN,

Source: The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Missouri)

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