Back in December 2009, '3' started their enforced upgrades on customers using their Skype service. See
this thread.
More recently, andy posted reply #23
here, breaking the news that the same thing had just occurred on his Nokia 6120, and there were various interactions between him and myself on that subject, q.v.
However, about a week ago, an extraordinary thing happened - in that ALL of my other '3' handsets were also forced to upgrade the version of Skype they were using !
Now I don't know whether this is happening nationally or not, but it certainly happened in the area in which I live. These imposed changes occurred the day after '3' upgraded their network in my area, but I don't know if that was a consequence of the upgrade, or just a coincidence. I have no way of telling.
The major change that these enforced upgrades engendered is that ALL of my '3' handsets now display the CLI of the SIM being used - NOT my Skype preset CLI. There are pluses and minuses to this.
The positive thing is that it is no longer necessary to subscribe to Skype and buy credit - in order to send the 2 text messages that Skype require to preset CLI.
Members who use certain services which had previously required this will find that they can save themselves the £11-25 or whatever.
The negative side of this development is that it is no longer possible to set up various Skype CLI's, and to change your CLI at will by logging in to a different Skypename.
Just for the record, the versions of Skype that I am now using, *all* of which display your mobile number as your CLI, are as follows:-
Version 3.80.0.2 on a Skypephone S2;
Version 3.81.0.0. on a Skypephone S2;
Version 4.5.0.46 on a Huawei U710;
Version 6.0.0.20 on both an Inq Mini and an Inq Chat;
Version 6.93.0 on my Nokia 6120.
It is interesting to speculate about 3's motives in imposing all of these changes. Back when the first such imposed change was reported, in December 2009, Mikael thought that '3' might have done inadequate testing before the version 3 was imposed on the Skypephone S2 which had previously used versions 2.
However, now that this policy has become much more entrenched, I find myself thinking alone more Machiavellian lines, and wondering if 3 disliked their customers being able to chose and change CLIs, and have now systematically imposed changes to take that away ?
What do others think ?