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I am not so sure: according to Wikipedia, Skype uses SILK, which has bitrate of 6-60 kbit/s [0]. In contrast, G.711 (often used for classic landline telephones) has a bitrate of 64 kbit/s [1].

I can only speak from personal experience: my cheap standard landline has much better audio quality and lower delay times than any Skype call I have made.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SILK

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.711

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Bitrate only tells a little bit of the story. There are high pass and low pass filters, audio compression, data compression, latency, error correction and a number of other things at play with these codecs to hit a desired bitrate with the goal of maximizing for highest legibility over unreliable connections. This leads to a number of compromises; in the case of Skype this means you can have huge variance in quality, and landlines are consistent but incredibly limited in reproducible bandwidth and dynamic range.

Is this bitrate comparison an "apples to apples" comparison?

I know when talking about audio compression in the frame of music reproduction AAC 256Kb/s is similarly performant to MP3 320Kb/s - and I think there are better performing audio codecs still.

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