Skype celebrates the World Cup with a month of free phone calls to one country

by Scott Carmichael on

Are you a Skype user? If not, you may want to sign up today, because a new promotion from this Internet phone service is giving away a free month of phone calls to one of 32 different countries. In the fine print, you’ll see that “a month” actually equals 120 minutes, but if you have someone heading abroad this summer, 120 minutes could be the difference between free or a a $100 phone bill.

The free calls can be made to landlines only, and the deal is only available to the first 100,000 people that sign up, so don’t delay! You’ll find the Skype free calls football promo here.

Skype Access uses your Skype credit to access 100,000 paid Wi-Fi hotspots

by Scott Carmichael on

Trying to make a Skype call on the road at a hotspot? Up till now, you first had to pay to access paid Wi-Fi hotspots – which often meant having to pay for an entire day just so you could make one phone call.

The new Skype Access service takes care of this by combining Skype calling with hotspot access.

When you use the most recent version of the Windows or Mac Skype client, the application will offer to take care of paying for your hotspot access. Accessing paid hotspots costs $0.19 per minute – which is substantially cheaper than the $15 or $20 charged by many public paid access points.

A list of all the supported Wi-Fi hotspot providers can be found here. All the major providers are covered, including those at airports and hotels around the world.

At the moment, Skype Access is not (yet) available on their mobile clients, but hopefully that is only a matter of time.

Being able to make a Skype call, and pay for both the call and your hotspot access from your Skype credit is a brilliant idea – and one that will make phone calls on the road even easier. Click here to learn more about the new Skype Access feature, or to download the latest version of Skype.