In order to keep the service’s key feature in tact Josh Silverman, Chief Executive at Skype has revealed that they are “seriously considering” launching third party advertising on the service.

“It’s challenging to get right as the way people use is Skype is very personal but we think our users expect us to do it so we can continue to support free. But it will be done in a tasteful way,” he explained.

At the moment there are no third party adverts on the Skype service at all so the addition of these adverts could cause some annoyance.

Skype seem to be doing all they can to ramp up their revenue steams at the moment as they have recently upgraded their premium offerings.

Third party adverts would not be ideal for users but would seem worth the slight hassle if they enabled the service to be kept free.

Last week Skype announced a while new range of monthly subscriptions offering their cheapest call rates yet across 170 countries.

Skype has grown so much that they look to be attempting to rival the major telecommunications companies to make audio calls to mobiles and landlines around the world on a ‘pay as you go’ basis.

Skype will also be launching a beta version of a ‘five way video’ group calling feature this week.

This new service will be free for the first 3 months while the company monitors its progress and gathers feedback, it will then become a pay monthly service as Skype look to cash in on their service.

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Internet technology firm (VOIP) predict that Skype’s new subscriptions will give their customers huge savings of up to 60% when compared with Skype’s current standard pay as you go rates as the new price plans will allow the user to choose a country that they call most often therefore saving them money every time they call that country.

The subscriptions will begin at 69p per month and carry call rates that will effectively start at a penny a minute and will be available for purchase through Skype as of this week.

Before this change was made calls to mobile phones in most nations (apart from China and America) could only be made on a pay per minute basis.

As of this week customers in the UK that sign up for country specific subscriptions will be able to choose whether they want their bundle to include calls to landlines, mobiles or both.

This will enable bundled Skype to mobile calls in European countries for the first time.

Skype consumer business chief Neil Stevens had this to say about the changes:

“Skype’s new monthly subscriptions lower the cost of international calling and make it simple to choose the plan that best meets your needs, People around the world can now have the simplicity and flexibility to call almost any phone in the world for less.”

The new subscriptions are available in three time lengths; 1 month, 3 month or 12 month plans and the call allowances will range from 1 hour to unlimited.

Skype have stated that they will continue to allow pay as you go calls to mobiles and landlines worldwide and they will also be keeping their unlimited world monthly subscriptions.

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