Disruptive Telephony

I do have to hand it to the Skype marketing folks... it's certainly a cute move on their part to offer Skype users in the US and Canada a full day of free calls to landlines and cell phones around the world.   With Mother's Day being one of the highest days of phone usage, it's a natural day to pick for a gimmick. 

There are limits, though, and the terms and conditions were interesting to read.  I'm not sure how to read #9 where users are limited to 200 minutes per call:

Skype asks that you enjoy this offer fairly and sensibly, for your personal and non-commercial purposes. Calls are limited to 200 minutes per computer during the offer period. If you make excessive, systematic or intentional misuse of the offer, Skype reserves the right to terminate your access to your account immediately.

So is that 200 minutes, total?  Or is that per call?  i.e., if you've been talking to someone for over 3 hours on the same call you have to hang up and initiate a new call?  Either way, it's a good amount of time to spend on the "phone".

I also enjoyed this part:

Skype reminds users of the nature and limitations of the Internet and is not responsible for any hardware or software problems, any technical malfunctions of any communications network, online system or computer hardware or software that may affect access to the offer. Skype is also not responsible for any fraudulent, incomplete, garbled, or delayed computer transmissions or inaccurate transcription of information, whether caused by Skype, its users or by any of the equipment or programming associated with or utilized in this offer by any technical or human error which may occur in the processing of the offer which may damage a user's system or limit a participant's ability to participate in the offer.

So if you can't understand your mom (or whomever else you call), it's not Skype's responsibility!  :-)

Ah, well... kudos to them for coming up with a cute marketing gimmick.  If it get's some more people to try out consumer VoIP, all the better for us all.

I will call my Mom on Mother's Day, but odds are that I'll just be using the regular old landline.  We'll see.  It's tempting to call other people in other parts of the world that day, but: a) it's a Sunday and for most folks I know overseas it's a weekend and they like to spend that time with their family; and b) *I* will be spending that day with my family.

P.S. Also quite interesting to see that Intel is a co-sponsor of this marketing campaign.