Monday, September 26, 2005

Skype in South Africa

So Skype dropped their SkypeOut rates in South Africa recently. The new rates make Skype effectively cheaper than Telkom.

The rates, are however, still too high. South Africa should be included in the SkypeOut Global rates countries. South Africa has something like 5 million people with fixed-phone lines and using the internet. This is much larger than the entire populations of some of the countries included. Broadband is growing from a tiny amount (Currently sitting at 100000), but the rate of growth is over 300% last I heard.

If Skype were to do that and include SkypeIn for South Africa, then suddenly Skype becomes a contender to replace my Telkom line almost entirely.
But without SkypeIn, this will not happen.

Project Gizmo falls woefully short here, even worse than Skype.

So, we will just have to wait and see what happens over time. My money is on Skype coming through