SkypeIn!

Two blogs in one day? Yes, but SkypeIn is here! In Beta form only, but it seems to work fine: so now I can call out, and receive calls, without having to use a phone. Or to put it another way: now I can have a fully working telephone, pay a penny a minute for calls, and pay ZERO line rental to BT, or NTL, or whoever. Skype is getting our money, and these companies are worried about it, I just know they are. We got rid of our landline in expectation of this, and we haven't been let down. The only (unforeseen) drawback is the charge to use a land based "number", but this only works out at about £1.50 a month, so again, not complaining. It's better than NTL's £9.99 line rental. I've got a number rental going instead! AND there's free voicemail, which I know NTL charges over £1.50 per month for ALONE. A weird thing you can do to test SkypeIn by the way: use Skype (if you've activated SkypeOut) to ring your SkypeIn number, you'll find you can test the voicemail, though I don't think you can pick up on yourself. The number itself (+44208816****) as you can see is a London based number (all UK Skype numbers seem to begin with that number format-surely not, only 9,999 numbers?) , which I suppose may incur national rate for local friends that ring us, but so many have these packages that include national rate as local, or that give free weekend or evening or all-the-time calls, that I don't think it's a big problem. Hey, uncle Pete, you can call me real cheap you old cockney sparrer'! And as Paul pointed out to me: I'm now a Londoner with a genuine London number! Here's the new Skype panel: observant Skypers may find we're only a click away: