I have used Skype for more than a decade as my preferred international telephone and video chat facility. Never saw any need to pay for their premium service though, as the free version performs exceedingly well.
Just needed to convince my overseas clients or friends to create their own Skype ID and download/install the free program and together we saved $ooo's in telephony charges over the years.
Now the audio quality vastly exceeds that of my land-line's relatively poor microphone and ear-piece/ built -in speakers. Optical Fibre and/or cable broadband is vastly superior to copper for transmission speeds and voice clarity.
That wasn't always the case in the earlier, dial-up era, but broadband speeds and computer processing power (even on smartphones) has propelled VoIP and Skype into an entirely new league.
On my home theatre PC, I have audiophile quality sound cards and surround-sound speakers/ microphones that Skype takes advantage of. No competition therefore with a POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) handset.
It can be encrypted end-to-end - and with a Full HD webcam - offers excellent full-screen video calls. Brilliant for keeping up with family members overseas, or talking a client through a complex software problem. Since it also allows concurrent real-time-messaging, conference calling and screen sharing, what more could you want?
In terms of privacy, I only run Skype when I originate a call or take a call by prior arrangement. That way it doesn't load on boot-up or remain resident in memory unless I invoke it. Less obtrusive that way.
And Skype can be set up so that I allow only authorised individuals to contact me so that it doesn't become a channel for unwanted attention, spamming or abuse.
When it first appeared in 2003 as an Estonian peer-to-peer voice over internet protocol facility, it was revolutionary but quite rudimentary and call quality was generally poor or patchy, though it was immediately popular - especially for international communications, but after being taken over first by eBay in 2005 and now by Microsoft, it has evolved with the tremendous strides made by computer hardware and software since then to be a superbly powerful and essential Internet telephony tool.
That said, my preferred method of communication with the wonderful folk around the globe bitten by the Trainz bug is this humble forum. Who really needs high-fidelity, real-time video facilities for this purpose? Not me!
