Disruptive Telephony

Interesting development in the land of Skype... they are no longer offering inbound phone numbers in Brazil. Per a post on Skype's Portuguese blog, translated into English via Google Translate, the company providing phone numbers in Brazil, Transit Telecom, has notified Skype that it will no longer be supplying these phone numbers.

Skype's inbound numbers are now referred to as "Online Numbers" but were originally called "SkypeIn" numbers. For an annual fee of somewhere between $30 - 60 USD per year (depending upon discounts with subscriptions), you can have multiple inbound numbers attached to your Skype account from a range of countries:

In full disclosure, I've had a SkypeIn/OnlineNumber for years and it works extremely well.

The challenge for Skype, of course, is that they typically have to work with local carriers in the individual countries to obtain those inbound numbers (also referred to as "DIDs" in telecom)... and obviously is at the mercy of the local carrier to keep providing those numbers. Now who knows what happened in this case... perhaps Transit Telecom wanted to charge more than Skype wanted to pay... perhaps they had some other business challenge between the two companies.

Whatever the case, Brazil is no longer an option for an inbound number into your Skype account. Per Skype's note, existing Brazilian numbers will continue to work for the duration of your subscription but will not be able to be renewed. Unless, of course, Skype can find another service provider to provide them with Brazilian DIDs...

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