Skype, an online videoconferencing service provider, is reportedly doubling the cost of the connection fee to place calls to landline and mobile phones in certain countries will starting on Sept 6. According to the company’s Web site, users who make calls to countries outside the so-called “Global Rate Destinations” group will see their connection fee nearly double, depending on the currency of the call, according to Skype’s (News - Alert) Web site.

 

For a U.S. Skype user, a call to Canada would cost 3.9 cents for a connection, in addition to per minute rates. Yet, a call placed to India, a country outside of the Global Rate Destination grouping, would cost the same users 7.9 cents to connect, on top of the per minute rate.

 

More than 30 countries are included in the Global Rate Destination Group, including Western Europe, Poland, Argentina, China, New Zealand and Australia. But those Skype users who want to make calls to other markets, such as Brazil, Mexico, or countries in Central America or Africa will have to pay more.

 

Skype lets users make telephone calls over the Internet. Calls made to other users of the service are free. While there is a fee to make calls to landlines and mobile phones, the free VoIP service is catching on.

 

Skype officials, however, said the cost increase for its minimal.

 

“It is only a small one-time increase per call, and these changes do not affect the per-minute charges for Skype calls," Chaim Haas told FierceVoIP. "Skype regularly reviews its pricing to reflect market conditions, and the company determined that it needed to adjust the connection rates to countries outside of the Global rate group."

 

It’s not clear whether Skype’s decision to increase its pricing structure has any bearing on Google (News - Alert) Voice's recent changes to its service. As TMCnet’s Tom Keating (News - Alert) reported, Google Voice, a product of Google's 2007 acquisition of GrandCentral, a Freemont, Calif.-based firm that uses Web-based software to voice calls over the Internet, added SIP connectivity through Gizmo5 (News - Alert) which allows free inbound and outbound calling.

 

Skype made headlines last month when news reports said the service could be banned from use in Russia after a group found it was is cutting in on the interests of Russian cellular operators.

 

The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs said it had concerns about Skype and Internet telephony in its nation and reportedly formed a group to prepare proposals for legislative control over IP activities in Russia, Pravda.Ru said. As TMCnet reported, one argument for such a restriction is that telephone conversations via Skype can’t be wiretapped. RUIE has high hopes the government will support that fact in its quest to limit the service