I needed to do a conference call to participate in a meeting last night. There was a phone in the meeting room the rest of the group occupied, but it couldn’t do conference calling. We were stuck.

I did a quick search in the Skype help file and conference calling on Skype can include other skype users and direct phone calls. Skype phone rates of 2.5 cents/minute apply unless you’ve signed up for their unlimited plan. The cost of unlimited North American calls is only $30/year. That’s right: the cost is per year.

So I called up the people we needed to and hooked each of them into the call and it worked seamlessly. The call quality was clear enough that we had people on speakerphone and the conversation was clear. It was awesome. I’ve always disliked phone technology for these types of services because it always seems kludgey and costly. Skype has helped me eliminate both of those barriers.