SkypeOut celebrates its first birthday. It has lowered rates to 20 countries, and added 6 to its € 0.017 per minute global rate. The global rate applies when Skype has a local node in the country and can place the PSTN calls through the traditional phone network as a local call.
That rate is not available in the Philippines. Skype has to place the call from the US. Will the VoIP deregularization in progress change that? Some cities in China and the mobile network are on the global rate. Perhaps Skype buys wholesale minutes from a state-owned telco? One of our local telcos can do the same: sell Internet bandwidth to Skype for the VoIP traffic, then offer access to the PSTN or GSM network for the termination. Our local telcos have enough Internet bandwidth to make that cost-effective.