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Johannesburg - Skype is offering free or cheap calls to landline telephones in all countries participating in the 2010 FIFA World Cup in July.
In all, 120 free minutes are available for calls to landline numbers in South Africa.
To qualify, you must first register with Skype on the internet and, among other things, provide your credit card details or work through PayPal (www.paypal.com).
Skype is a telephony service working through the internet. Many people with family and friends overseas are already familiar with it.
But it has not yet attracted great attention for local calls in South Africa, because the country has so far lacked unlimited Internet access.
Such internet access is however becoming more available on the local front and, with it, Skype can become more popular here.
With Skype, conversations are conducted via computers. Two computers that are both connected to the internet can in this way be linked by the click of a mouse and from that point conversations are unlimited and free – if one discounts the cost of internet connectivity.
But with unlimited internet access for a basic monthly fee this becomes less of a factor.
These types of conversations can also take place by video, which means that the call becomes a video call.
The application is also of course available on laptops – and some cellphones are also beginning to offer Skype connectivity.
This means that an international call takes place via the cellphones’ data connections (on both sides) instead of being a more expensive international cellphone call.
Skype can also be used to connect to landlines or cellphones from a computer.
To use the facility, you pay an amount into your Skype account and the costs are recovered from that. But Skype’s soccer offering will be free or cheaper during July.
- Sake24.com
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