captsolo weblog

Luxembourg, July 27, 2005 — To celebrate first SkypeOut anniversary, Skype announced lowered SkypeOut rates to 30+ countries and that 6 new countries and regions have been added to the SkypeOut Global Rate.

Yet, this change leaves the European Union member states divided - in new and old Europe.

SkypeOut Rates for EU member states:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland*, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom - SkypeOut global rate - 0.017 eur/min.

Luxembourg 0.020 eur/min
Czech Rep. 0.023
Estonia    0.023
Hungary    0.024
Finland    0.025

Cyprus     0.048 eur/min
Slovenia   0.052
Slovakia   0.055
Lithuania  0.092

Latvia     0.122 eur/min
Malta      0.145

We can see a clear division here - the global rate covers 13 out of 15 "old" states and only one new member state - Poland. The rest of new EU member states and Luxembourg and Finland are outside the global rate.

Skype are doing a good job in connecting people and that is a good trend. Big telecommunication companies have even higher rates and they should learn and adapt.

But it still leaves a fact that there is such a rate divide - and that a SkypeOut call to the UK would cost only 14% of whan a SkypeOut call to Latvia will.

Note: this analysis includes only regular landline SkypeOut rates.