SkypeIn for Belgium?

Often I get the question: “when will SkypeIn be available for Belgium?". I am not Skype Staff, therefore i will probably know it at the same time or later than the press!

Jan Geirnaert is from Ghent, the same city as I am from, but he lives in Malaysia. He seems to like me a lot because he contacted me twice this weekend (see my previous post). I am worried .

Today he asked me to call him on his Belgian number 09298xxxx with my fixed line 09222yyyy. But, I know he is still in Malaysia, and Skype hasn’t added SkypeIn countries in ages! Belgium isn’t available yet!
Well there is an equivalent solution:
I called him, the call was diverted to his Skype account in Malaysia and the quality of the call was OK! I only paid for a local call. He paid nothing for the call itself!

Some price comparisons

• My fixed line in Belgium (Belgacom): 7.50 €/month
• SkypeIn for 3 months (not yet available for Belgium): 5 €/month
• Virtuphon: 5.30 €/month

Virtuphon is available for 39 countries, SkypeIn available for 22 countries only! Dominican Republic, Germany, Hong Kong and Japan are only possible with Skype. Therefore, if we join both, we have “virtual phone numbers” for a total of 44 countries!
[EDITED:] Thanks to the comment of Phil ... SkypeIn also in South Korea, numbers above were adapted.

By the way, Skype seems to rename SkypeIn in “Skype Online Number”.

And thanks to Jan for pointing me to that. I guess he will also blog on it!