Skype, the world’s largest international voice carrier, will next week double the connection fee for many of its calls.
All international calls outside of its global rate destinations will attract a US$0.079 connection fee, compared to the current US $0.039 fee, from September 6.
The price hike affects calls to major telecom destinations such as India. A SkypeOut call to New Delhi currently costs US$0.092 per minute.
The global rate zone of 30 countries includes Asia-Pacific markets such as Singapore, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Australia
The price rise flies in the face of the continual fall in both retail and wholesale charges for international voice calls in every market in the world.
“We review our pricing on a regular basis for calls to landlines and mobile phones, and we make any necessary adjustments to reflect market conditions and deliver the best value to Skype users,” a Skype spokesperson told telecomseurope.net.
Skype this year became the world's largest global voice carrier, delivering 8% of the global traffic, according to TeleGeography research.
Skype had 42 million active user accounts and carried 2.9 billion minutes of IDD traffic each month in Q1 2009.