Skype will charge for SkypeOut calls as of the start of 2007. It’s a shame that they decided to charge for it now, since I liked not having a long distance plan, but it was fairly obvious that it was going to happen. Even so, their rate of $30/year is still cheaper than most long distance plans from traditional telcos.
Fear not – there are free alternatives. There’s Jajah, although when we tried it, the sound quality was abysmal. I’m not sure if it was the connection or the service itself. VoipBuster is another one, but its name puts me off, I’ve heard little about it at this point, and I’m a bit sceptical. However, the open-source Gizmo will likely be the replacement that I’ll go with. So if I ask you to sign up for a free Gizmo account, try not to act surprised 😉