I don’t like Teams. :(
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I have a MS Office 365 subscription. It includes 60m/month of outbound calling to landline and/or cellular phone numbers. When travelling overseas, I’ve used that feature occasionally to make LD calls, and it’s been very handy to have. My domestic cellular provider charges an outrageous daily fee when roaming internationally.
As best I can tell from reading the MS help pages, this out-call capability will vanish when Skype shuts down. It seems that Teams does support outbound calling but only with a paid premium level of service. Can anyone here advise if Teams provides free outbound calling to pstn phone numbers? Or if MS will be grandfathering the 60m/month of calls (that they are still advertising as part of Microsoft/Office 365)?
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I have a nice Boston Skype number that I use for a U.S. number even though I live in Japan. I just renewed it in February. I wonder what my options are to not lose the number. I do have other VoIP numbers though. But I’ve had this number for a long time. It’s set in all sorts of places.
The VoIP services I use are technically better than Skype, to be honest. You can set a voicemail greeting (Skype discontinued that years ago). Also short number verification from places like banks work. And I get unlimited texting in both directions with no added cost. in that sense, Skype is dated.
But I would prefer not to lose the number. Apparently we can port it somewhere. But where?
Apparently I have until next February to figure it out?
It is a bit confusing, but Microsoft will be continuing the 60 minute call service through March 2026 for subscribers who already have it, but after May 2025, you’ll have to use the Skype web portal or Teams Free to use it.
According to Microsoft’s “Skype is retiring in May 2025: What you need to know” support article (scroll down to the “End of support for 60-minute Skype Calls in Microsoft 365 Subscriptions” section):
The 60 minutes of Skype calls feature will be removed from Microsoft 365 Personal and Microsoft 365 Family subscriptions starting March 2026.
…
Beginning May 2025, the Skype Dial Pad will be available to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers from the Skype web portal and within Teams Free. Subscribers can continue to use their Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscription or Skype Credits.
As for free PSTN calling alternatives, I don’t know of any that will work in the Teams environment, but it’s not something I’ve spent time looking into. It can be a lot of work to figure out Microsoft’s complicated offerings. There are a few paid Teams plans that might be worth looking into, but I’m not sure if they work with the Family/Personal subscriptions. After that, I guess switching to things like Google Voice (depending on where you are) would be the next thing to look into.
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This will be a big deal, internationally. Those of us still using Skype do so primarily for international calls, both for business and personal communication. Skype developed into a one-stop-for-everything model, effectively squashing small competitors via MS. I’ve liked how this one app has been fairly functional and essential for use with dozens of countries we used to call “developing,” poor infrastructure. This is perhaps another indicator case where American (domestic) use is quite out of touch with how the rest of the planet does connect. Would have been nice to see some sort of “evolved” development in communications before now. You might ask yourselves, how does the rest of the world conduct video calls? Let alone chats/messaging? And “why don’t the common folk sound more like us?”
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Skype was useful for calling freephone numbers in the US from the UK (1-800). Will Google voice or any other apps let me do this?
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The free version of Talkatone is good for this, I’ve been using it for a few years. The interface on the free tier is a bit cluttered but for my very occasional use it is more than sufficient.
I also used it a few years ago when visiting the US to make some calls to local numbers (eg. phoning a shop to check if they had something in stock). That was also free and worked over mobile data which I had from a Three ‘roam like home’ PAYG plan, so allowed me to avoid expensive roaming charges.
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@TBTdn Me too!
I use Skype several days each week to make calls around the world from Japan (home) or abroad (when I travel). I will now have to find an alternative for inexpensive (or even free when calling toll-free numbers) phone calls.
I’ll start looking… and share here. Hopefully amongst the TidBITS Talk members together we will find a good alternative.
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Depending on where you’re calling, Talkatone might work for you.
Skype has unlimited free video call meetings. Teams has a 60 minute limit; Zoom has a 40 minute limit. For not-for-profit groups, including support groups (e.g., AA), Skype was really useful for this. Those groups will now have to deal with using the more-geeky Jitsi or raise money to rent a video call license.
@josehill
Thanks so much for the detailed reply, and pointer to the MS support article which I missed.
The MS ‘offer’ to use the Skype Dial Pad from the Skype web portal (beginning May 2025) really isn’t useful. When one is travelling out of the country with cellphone in hand, using a web portal to make phone calls instead of the Skype app is hardly a replacement. Nice job, Microsoft.
I looked very briefly at Teams. Oh my, it’s complicated, like most MS offerings. I’ve never used it, so I think I’ll pass on Teams. Google Voice is a non-starter, since I reside in Canada. I don’t have a US-based cellphone number, which appears to be a pre-requisite. I have a grandfathered (and free) GSuite account, but Google Voice can’t be added to it.
I think my alternative to the outcalling with Skype app that came with Office365 will be a VoIP account from voip.ms and a SIP softphone app (the Acrobits softphone app for iOS is not free, but fairly inexpensive). That enables worldwide PSTN calling over WiFi or cellular data, with rates that are pretty cheap. I believe calls to 1-800 & other toll-free numbers are free.
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Teams is not a well-executed user interface. I use it almost daily for work, and it is a mess for users and for professional administrators, too. That said, the mobile Teams app might be viable while you look for the long term solution. I don’t know what the Skype dialer will look like in the mobile Teams app, but getting to the call interface on the mobile app isn’t quite as daunting as the desktop app. I find the mobile Teams app to be less clunky than the desktop app, though I still wouldn’t say it is “good.”
Thanks for the voip.ms/acrobits suggestion. It will be interesting to see the suggestions that the TidBITS community will no doubt make.
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Multiple people have asked me which VoIP services I use, since both let me do things like receive texts from short numbers for bank verifications and so on.
One is Talkatone. I have the paid plan which also supports transcriptions of voice messages and allows for short-code verification from places like banks. The voice quality is also good.
And I also have TextNow which is an actual phone service. I got their SIM and activated it when I was in the U.S. It works fine for free for short-number verifications, and it also allows replying to those texts, which Talkatone does not. But there are more restrictions on setting it up as VoIP if you live outside the U.S. and Canada.
So to get started, if you live overseas, Talkatone might be easiest. However I don’t know if either will let you port in your Skype number.
I also tried experimenting with Google Voice just before and supposedly got my new Google Voice number verified via my TextNow number, but when I try to call that number I can’t get through. I think Google Voice is very awkward and complicated. Especially for someone like me who lives overseas and trying to get around their foreign limitations.
At the moment, I’m thinking of possibly simply forgetting about my Skype number and before it expires in about a year making sure I’ve updated my number everywhere to either my TextNow number or Talkatone number.
I am waiting to hear back from both of those VoIP service if they will allow me porting in my Skype number as an extra number. I doubt that will work though.
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I won’t miss Skype either and one thing for sure: I will not use Teams to replace its functionality.
A. There’s a replacement to landlines. Who uses them anyway? Social apps like WhatsApp and Telegram (and FaceTime and others) offer excellent voice quality. Most businesses already offer social app calls as an alternative to their 1-800 numbers and those who don’t will sure do sooner than later.
B. Microsoft is trying to turn Teams into a monopoly. They are creating a siloed system. If I must use a siloed system it would rather be a free social app rather than one owned and operated by a company that had already tried to dominate the OS and office suite world by brute force.
So go ahead Micro$oft. Shut Skype down. You’re in for a big surprise if you’re expecting a surge in use of Teams as an alternative. I do have Teams installed on my device, for the purpose of joining conference calls organized by those who fell in the Teams trap. But my paid subscriptions to conference call apps and online office apps is not with Microsoft and is unlikely to be so.
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Interesting to see all the hatred for Teams.
I’ve been using it at work for many years and think it’s a great work-collaboration app. But it is tightly integrated with the entire Microsoft ecosystem, including Outlook, SharePoint/OneDrive, Office apps, and many other relatively expensive services. Since my employer pretty much is a Microsoft shop and I use all these services anyway, integrating it all via Teams has never been a big deal.
But yes, if you’re trying to use it standalone, without all that integration, and without a corporate IT department to run the back-end, and all you want is to video-chat with individuals, it’s massive overkill and has a learning curve that should be unnecessary for such a situation.
As much as I hate Meta, I would say that for such simple individual-user situations, WhatsApp does seem to tick all the important boxes.
As for my personal preferences for a corporate collaboration tool, I’ve always liked Cisco’s WebEx. But it seems to be declining in popularity as corporations migrate to Microsoft, Google and Zoom’s solutions.
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Yes, and I was speaking more generally because my sense is that people use Skype for a variety of different things that I can’t predict. The unlimited free video call option that someone mentioned below is another of those beyond how the Dial Pad will remain available.
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I have been using Skype since before Microsoft bought it.
My small business went virtual with Covid and Skype is our preferred method of communications (mixed Mac - PC). We will miss it.
I have a few dollars for calls I occasionally make to land lines or cell phones internationally that I will find hard to relace. Teams is great wheh somebody invites you to a Teams meeting but nothing else
Lots of people for lots of reasons.
Like vinyl…
My former landline, the twisted copper pair, had been unbundled and is now used by my ISP to deliver the last mile VDSL2+ (35b) service to my home. Just because fiber is not yet at my curb.
What used to be a landline is now a soft-phone. I get to use that number even when I’m out of home as I have the VoIP app on my mobile, but hardly any calls come through this prehistoric number. Mostly spam and scam calls.
Time to move on.