Skype Plans For-Fee Service
Reports are beginning to leak in that Skype, the free peer-to-peer voice-over-IP (VoIP) slash instant-messaging service, will launch a pay service connecting Skype VoIP to the plain old telephone system.
Didn’t someone write about this back in the fall? Oh wait — that was me! To wit:
At some point, to gain market, Skype needs to open a gateway between the IP network and the telephone network (which is apparently in the plans). At that point, I would lay bets that Skype ceases to be free and falls into pretty much the same realm as Net2Phone and DialPad.
That’s from the Skype Hype is Tripe entry, that, incidentally, is consistently one of the top ten entry points for this site. I think a lot of people find their way here via searches that land them on that link. It’s on page 5 of Google search for “skype,” but the third for “skype hype.”