Vodafone charges for Skype Video calls

statgar

Whilst visiting Australia last December I made two Skype video calls, from my Vodafone, to different Vodafone numbers both in the same UK location. The first call lasted 17 minutes for which I was billed 54MB but the second call, which took place 10 hours later, lasted 24 minutes for which they billed 208MB. My research suggests that Skype calls can use between 2 and 4MB per minute so the first 17 minute call used 3.18MB per minute which is OK. Can anyone explain why the second call would use 8.67MB per minute i.e. 208MB / 24 minutes = 8.67MB? The call times check with my Skype account and also Vodafone’s records, although they say that they haven’t got them anymore.

afzaal1988

you could have checked on phone how much data skype used but i think it too late now.

pepdavies

I would assume that video is much like photos in that the file size is larger for a more complex image. Compare a photo of a white wall to a photo of something multi coloured. Even though both photos are the same amount of pixels, the plain image will usually be a smaller sized jpeg. It may be that your surroundings during the call had a similar effect. Another possibility is that some apps use a higher bitrate if you have a better signal, i.e. 4G vs 3G.

d123

I wouldn't think there is such a thing as a standard rate, camera resolution will increase or decrease picture quality, as will connection speed, so the faster the connection the higher the resolution and therefore the more data consumed.

Techhead_2

According to Skype, a high quality video call between two mobile devices devices uses about 500kbps in each direction. This works out at about 4 Megabytes a minute. As you pm for both uploaded and downloaded data then it's going to cost about 8Megabytes a minute.

I guess the two calls connected at different qualities.

statgar

Thanks so much for that I didn't realise that it would be a two way charge hence the reason for the higher MB useage guess I just got away with the cheaper one. Why couldn't Vodafone have explained it that way! Thanks again for your interest and help.