Skype Introduces Free Phone Calls to Landlines & Mobiles In US / Canada for Indian users

Realizing that India is one of the most rapidly growing and biggest markets, Skype is paying a lot more attention to this region. Shortly after introducing real time translation in Hindi, they have announced a new promotion plan which allows free calling to any landline or mobile in the U.S. or Canada totally free of cost till March 1.

Free Calling to Phones in U.S. and Canada

All existing and new Skype users in India can make free calls to landline and mobile phones to United States and Canada till March 1, 2015 (00:01 IST).

“Yes, that’s right – for a limited time only, all calls from India to mobiles and landlines in the United States and Canada are completely free. And you don’t even need to do anything other than start calling,” states the Skype India home page.

Though the free calling will be available to both personal and business users, it does come with certain imitations to prevent a possible misuse of the facility.

Skype terms and conditions which are listed here, however, make it clear that their free calling cannot be used for telemarketing or spamming. The following have been listed as unfair practices by the company:

• Making calls for telemarketing or call centre operations
• Re-selling minutes
• Sharing minutes between users whether via a PBX, call centre, computer or any other means
• Calling numbers (whether singly, sequentially or automatically) to generate income for yourself or others as a result of placing the call, other than for your individual business communications (and subject to Section 4.1 of the Terms of Use); and
• Unusual calling patterns inconsistent with normal use, for example, regular calls of short duration or calls to multiple numbers in a short period of time.

Goes without saying, the offer will see many more users in the country creating a Skype account to talk to their acquaintances over these two countries without having to pay for that.

Skype’s Real Time Translator For Hindi

While Real Time translator is not a recent launch, we thought we will let you know about this Skype feature that many will find quite useful.

The inability to converse in English is seen as a big handicap for most people across this country. Though those who can speak, write and express themselves in the language are denounced by some as ‘suffering from a colonial hangover’, one cannot but deny that it is one language which is spoken and understood by a majority of the world’s population.

The new Skype Translator by Microsoft can help overcome this language barrier and allow real time conversations between spoken English and Spanish to begin with though the software giant plans to add more languages also later. Since they plan to extend the facility to include languages like Klingon and Drunkspeak later, it will not be wrong tom assume that Hindi translation will also be made available soon.

Imagine being able to talk to your vendor in China or your online friend from Germany fluently, without the language being a handicap!

While announcing the feature in May, Microsoft had said “it fulfils a vision of the “universal translator” in the Star Trek science fiction series.” Let us hope the translation will not be as pathetic as that on Google. And that the translator will be able to pick up strong regional undertones effectively.