No additional charges for calling over 3G via Skype

On top of this great News, Skype also announced their iPhone app new multitasking feature that allows you to surf the internet while talking on the phone via their VoIP.

Those of you not familiar with the background story, after much ado with the whole business of placing Skype calls on the iPhone over 3G, Skype upgraded their application for the iPhone in May to allow calls over 3G. They then also announced that in August 2010, they will place additional charges for Skype calls over 3G. That freaked many people out, because it would challenge the concept of free Skype-to-Skype calls.

More importantly, they announced that they are dropping the plan of charging additional cents for calls over 3G. This is likely to be a cautious trackback after much anger displayed by users.

“You can receive Skype calls while other apps are running, even when your iPhone is locked,” said Skype blogger Peter Parkes.

Parkes also seemed rather excited that his firm had “updated the app’s graphics to support iPhone 4’s Retina Display,” and added better sound quality.

And yet, the app plus the accompanying service is still free, contrary to plans by the VoIP maker to monetize 3G based calls. Some may find this mighty altruistic of Skype, but cynics might be able to read between the bloggy lines of Parkes’ parlance.

Skype believes “that the mobile world is in a period of significant change, for example, with some operators starting to move to tiered pricing models.

“In light of that, we no longer have plans to charge a supplement to make calls over 3G.” Hmm, a carrier cut for Skype then?

Parkes also expressed hope the improvements would “lead to increased call frequency and longer calls,” which would presumably shift lots more voice minutes to data based VoIP.  Video would add an even heavier data guzzling component to this equation, making the “tiered pricing models” of which Parkes speaks even more interesting.

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