Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms RIP Skype

For those who came in late Skype, originally a European development released in 2003, was one of the first popular VoIP sytems that was oriented above all to voice calls, video calls and, to a lesser degree, messaging. When they released Skype Out it became my preferred method of making international calls to fixed numbers at an economical rate using a prepaid credit.

Now Microsoft, the owners since 2011, have decided to close Skype and migrate users to Teams. In theory the existing credit should be available to make VoIP calls to normal phone numbers. The only trouble is that the app, as at the moment, does not seem to have a dialer.

Other than that there is no easy method to obtaining a refund of the existing Skype credit. Given that there must be millions of users that have Skype credit, and do not wish to change to Teams, Microsoft stands to make a nice windfall from terminating Skype.

I love that you infer they have a soul and conscience Peter. Always the optimist

I remember and used SkypeOut for all our US and EU calls as well. It was pretty good for the time.

Teams was utter rubbish until COVID put the spotlight on remote group based collaboration and the competitors gave MS a sound thumping.
It still remains a bit naff for personal use compared to many other tools.

I think that the existing credit is still useable until they shut down Skype. I still have a Viber account but I only use it for one friend who does not want to change to something else. Strangely she only uses it for me so I don't understand her lack of logic.

I have used Viber Out in the past and found it OK but I really wanted to reduce the number of messaging apps that I use. As things stand I will probably buy some Viber Out credit and switch to Viber for making international calls.

The general consensus is that Teams is rubish and what I have seen of it so far seems to confirm that. Besides, as far as possible, I am trying to avoid using American products. Unfortunately the triumvirate of Microsoft, Google, and Apple are difficult to avoid as far as personal use operating systems are involved.

Regarding instant messaging, as I have mentioned in the past, Telegram remains my favourite for several reasons.

Now I need to find a way of reducing my dependence on Amazon (too damned convenient ); after all I don't want to be a parasite on America

From near it's inception I was using it regularly to stay in contact with family and friends whilst I cruised the Caribbean and east coast USA. Think I still had an account with them when I repatriated myself around 2010.
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I remember setting up an account for my Mother on her desktop set to auto answer my number as she could never remember which icon to click on. A good security feature as well as it brought up her camera. Sad to see it go, it served myself and my partner well - as you suggest Peter, RIP Skype.

I used Skype as having a VOIP number for marketing droids to call always seemed a good idea. I did PAYG but paid for 2 numbers. Pretty simple service and worked well for me. Of course you can’t get numbers on Teams without paying for a subscription, so will likely have to try a Skype clone… any recommendations?

https://numberpeople.co.uk/voip-phone-number/

I’ve not tried it yet, but you can get a free number from them.

I searched for “voip free phone number”.