Using Skype across the family

If you’re a big user of video services such as Skype you’ll know that one of the more powerful things you can do with the service is to use it to make group video calls.  Prior to April this year, you could only do this if one of the parties to the call had paid the price for Skype Premium at around US$8.99 a month.  But many of us may not have picked up that from April 2014, Skype has made this group calling ability available for free to standard Skype users.

I was reminded of this when I watched my wife have a two hour Skype group video call with her family – linking us in Auckland with family in Wellington and London.  We have a VDSL connection at home and the service worked without missing a beat across 4 locations.

So if you have family all over the world, connecting with them face-to-face is as easy as installing Skype, and as long as you have a reasonable broadband connection, you can have a group video to wish them all a merry christmas.