San Jose (CA) - Telecommunications could become a much more interesting topic in 2007, as Skype will be aggressively marketing itself as a more traditional company that offers phone calls : The company today said that it will be offering U.S. and Canada wide phone calling for a flat annual fee of $30. People who sign up early get the deal for $15.

First images of Skype 3.0 ...

If you have not taken Skype seriously so far, there is a good chance that you will have a closer look to the service soon. The company confirmed that a service that currently enables users to make free phone calls to any phone in the U.S. will expire by the end of this year. The bad news is that the firm’s marketing plan apparently worked and attracted enough users to convince Skype to begin charging for the service. The good news is that there will be very few services that are cheaper than the SkypeOut service.

The new "unlimited calling plan" is priced at $30/year ; if you sign up by January 31, you will pay $15. The fact that there is a good number of Skype-supporting handsets in the market puts Skype into a market segment between VoIP services that offer free PC-to-landline calls, such as the Gizmo Project, and VoIP providers such as Vonage. While the service isn’t quite ready to replace your regular phone line - as 911 calling is not available and "SkypeIn" phone numbers are still just an extra (around $40 for a 12-month subscription) - Vonage may begin to see more impact from Skype : A free unlimited calling plan from Vonage currently sells for $25/month or $300/year.

Skype continues to offer SkypeOut on a pay-minute basis : Calls within North America are priced at 2.1 cents per minute.

Skype claims that it has 136 million registered users worldwide and that it has become the most popular residential VoIP service in the U.S. with a market share of 29%.

Related article :
Skype announces Skype Out unlimited calling plan (SmallNetBuilder)